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CONTENTS<br />
Ed<strong>it</strong>orial<br />
By David Grundy.<br />
Paul Desmond (Part Three)<br />
The tale continues, as Paul Desmond finds himself in the midst of a satanic r<strong>it</strong>ual,<br />
playing bamboo flutes in a frozen wasteland, and attempting to represent complex<br />
philosophical truths. Dr Martin Luther Blisset remains your humble narrator.<br />
An Appreciation of Sergey Kuryokhin: On the Occasion of<br />
a Reissue of Some Combinations of Fingers and Passion<br />
“An unpredictable unfolding of contradictory states, agony, jouissance, terror, hope,<br />
dementia, insight...” By Seth Watter<br />
Gender and Music: “In Our Different Rhythms Together”<br />
“Maybe one day, there will no longer be the need for special features on gender; a post<br />
Patriarchal Cap<strong>it</strong>alist society will experience genuine divers<strong>it</strong>y & humankind's<br />
multidimensional difference will be what unifies us. Until then, I'm happy to grapple<br />
w<strong>it</strong>h the contradictions of gender & music in our time.” The complex relations between<br />
gender and free improvisation form a topic which always seems to receive less scrutiny<br />
than <strong>it</strong> should; hence Maggie Nicols’ essay, which addresses some of the issues at<br />
stake, w<strong>it</strong>h particular reference to her own career at the forefront of improvised music.<br />
You Tube Watch<br />
Videos documenting recent live performances by the Lucio Capece/Christian Kesten<br />
duo, and the trio of Tania Chen, Shabaka Hutchings and Mark Sanders, as well as a<br />
studio session featuring the great bassist Cecil McBee, and archive footage of John<br />
Klemmer in his pre-Smooth Jazz phase.<br />
CD Reviews<br />
From music for contemporary jazz big band, to new releases by established masters of<br />
free jazz and improvisation, and new experimental works for voice and electronics.<br />
Artists include Wadada Leo Sm<strong>it</strong>h, Bill Dixon, Joel Futterman, Darcy James Argue and<br />
Gigantomachia. Plus ESP-Disk re-issues of recordings by Charles Tyler, The<br />
Revolutionary Ensemble, and Sun Ra bassist Ronnie Boykins; and a re-vis<strong>it</strong>ed version<br />
of a 1970s solo recording by Byard Lancaster. Reviewed by David Grundy, Ian<br />
Thumwood and Sandy Kindness.<br />
Book Reviews<br />
Under consideration are: Martin Williams’ take on Miles Davis’ ‘Kind of Blue’; the first<br />
ever free jazz coffee-table book; and a thought-provoking collection of essays<br />
considering the relation between noise and cap<strong>it</strong>alism.<br />
Gig Reviews<br />
Gannets and Phil Waschmann blow away the cobwebs in Oxford; Sunn O))) threaten to<br />
undermine the building w<strong>it</strong>h the force of their sonic vibrations in Bristol.
PAUL DESMOND (Part Three)<br />
By Dr Martin Luther Blisset
English Winter can be Real Bad<br />
The hands of the clock run backwards. Reverse-twisted mirror<br />
above the oak beamed fireplace; A small wh<strong>it</strong>ewashed cottage, probably<br />
16 th century. Somewhere south of the river, South West of London. Thick<br />
fog outside.<br />
“Welcome, Mister Brubeck – or may we call you Dave?”<br />
“Yes, call me Dave, let’s not be formal.”<br />
“Well okay Dave, <strong>it</strong>’s lovely to have you w<strong>it</strong>h us. I’m Cleo, and of<br />
course you know my husband Johnny…”<br />
“Yes, I have long admired your work…”<br />
Blackthorn hedges obscure the remote stable-yard. As midnight<br />
approaches hooded figures assemble in a torchlight procession. Low<br />
voices chant ancient winter rhymes; the firelight sparks and throws up<br />
long shadows against the outbuildings.<br />
“Our number is complete, thirteen are assembled here…”<br />
“And call me Mom, relax…and of course we call dad ‘Father<br />
Johnny’…”<br />
Brubeck stands in the centre circle. It's freezing. This isn't<br />
California, that's for sure. And these English customs can be a l<strong>it</strong>tle<br />
strange. Old-World ways I guess... Gosh I wish they’d give me back my<br />
clothes though…<br />
Cleo steps into the firelight: “Human Beings, Mister Brubeck, are<br />
like dogs, are they not? Dogs that that have been trained to stand on<br />
their hind legs, to dance and wear skirts and dive through burning<br />
hoops, or chase hares for sport; to be rewarded or chastised according to<br />
their performance. We are no more emotionally equipped to deal w<strong>it</strong>h the<br />
lives we live than are trained poodles..."<br />
Sinister half-tone harmonies, rough voices rising in cadence.<br />
Brubeck shivers. Wh<strong>it</strong>e skin rising in gooseflesh. Johnny Dankworth,<br />
wearing a cape which seems to be made of dried fish skins and turkey<br />
feathers, begins to swing a flaming censer in a wide arc above the heads<br />
of the cowled peasants.<br />
“Cleo, Cleo!”<br />
“Yes darling what is <strong>it</strong>?”<br />
“The knife, dear, the knife.”<br />
“Ah yes, yes of course…”<br />
Cleo casts her robe aside, her proud breasts rising and falling in<br />
the firelight. In her right hand a silver dagger gleams, <strong>it</strong>s curved blade<br />
flat against her skin.<br />
Father Johnny places a bowl at Brubeck's feet.<br />
If You like Music That Doesn't Go Anywhere, Then This<br />
Could Be For You...<br />
Thatched sticks, a lattice of frozen ferns. Paul Desmond halted his
team of dogs and reached for the flask of brandy…<br />
The stone farmhouse seemed deserted. He made his way through<br />
the knee-deep snow to the wooden door.<br />
"Honey, I'm home.."<br />
there was no one. the farmhouse was deserted. he sat at the<br />
wooden table in the middle of the only room and reached into his jacket<br />
pocket. no one answered him. the old farmhouse was deserted. “where’s<br />
the. where’s the.” he reached into his inside jacket pocket, sat at the<br />
table and pulled out the kendal mint cake.<br />
“one piece. one piece now. there are no pieces. outside outside. ok<br />
doggies. ok i’m coming. the music of the night. such sweet music. you<br />
call that music.” he rested his head on the wooden table top. in the<br />
morning he was dead. there was a brubeck cd on the table in front of<br />
him. he had no idea what this object could be. <strong>it</strong> was 1963. the dogs<br />
were howling.<br />
“howling at the grave of their master. one more piece. all is in<br />
pieces. we can look inside. i am inside. paul? paul? hello, come in. this is<br />
the way step inside. the drill is in my head. i am the drill head. i am<br />
drilling. right left right left. quickmarch. slow april. the tattoo. mil<strong>it</strong>ary.<br />
they fucked him up, the army did. at heart i am a muslim. at heart i am<br />
an american.”<br />
the snow and ice opened up in front of him. the sledge moved<br />
gliding over the flat wh<strong>it</strong>e grey terrain.<br />
“mush mush. the dogs. the dogs. petties. petty concerns. out in the<br />
ice. nothing is real. only the ice. there is no real<strong>it</strong>y. only the ice knows<br />
this. the pur<strong>it</strong>y of water freezing. unconcerned. mish mash. mish mash.<br />
onward. i will play the only music. the music of bamboo. bamboo and<br />
flute. at heart i am an eskimo, an inu<strong>it</strong> person.” he looked out into the<br />
wastelands of ice and snow. he raised his head and shouted. "fuck you<br />
brubeck.there is no symmetry. who gave you this number?” their last<br />
conversation coming back at him, recurring here on the ice.<br />
“Jeez old pal come on, <strong>it</strong>’s me David for chrissakes. Come on now.<br />
Come back why dontcha. We been working on some new tunes.<br />
Symmetrical scales man. Morello met this guy, Lacy, soprano player?<br />
Anyways this guys been showing Morello, the banjo player, been showing<br />
him these scales. What you do see, is you spl<strong>it</strong> the octave down the<br />
middle. So, take say, C ok, F sharp’s the middle note. And then you put<br />
notes in around that symmetrically. C then E. F sharp and then G.’<br />
“who gave you this number? this number is ex-directory. how did<br />
you get this number?”<br />
“Come on pal. Hey you know what? We’ve done some tunes, back<br />
to the old whole tone scale. Four four time. There’s only two whole tone<br />
scales. So you always know you’re e<strong>it</strong>her in one or the other. Sh<strong>it</strong>, what<br />
d’you say. Come on back Paul, we need you.”
he held the receiver out and looked at <strong>it</strong>. black plastic against the<br />
wh<strong>it</strong>e and grey landscape, the wind in his ears. his beard freezing.<br />
“no,this is plastic. there is no plastic in real<strong>it</strong>y.” he caught himself<br />
thinking wrong. “there is nothing. all is not. nothing is not. everything is<br />
nothing.” he knew only the ice could know. he threw away the telephone.<br />
“there is no plastic in the allness.” he threw his head back. was he<br />
moving? did he really just holler?<br />
“no scales in the oneness. only the sound of the chimes. the<br />
bamboo and the flute. the ice. water. the music of night. such sweet<br />
songs. i too have. i too have loved. i too have loved. puppies. puppies.<br />
mish mash mish mash. hoykee carokee. the chimes.”<br />
he patted the tarpaulin bundle in front of him on the sledge. “the<br />
chimes. everything is in the bamboo. nothing is real. this is the way step<br />
inside. i am outside. outside of society, of real<strong>it</strong>y. are we moving. the<br />
mint cake. the mint cake.”<br />
hours later he came to. the sledge was still. “the wind, the wind is<br />
howling, through the graves the wind <strong>it</strong> howled. puppies. i will have to<br />
eat the dogs. godawful. dogs shaped like a sausage hot doggedy dawg.<br />
ketchup. gotta catch up. brubeck will beat me to <strong>it</strong>. play his awful music<br />
to the frozen wastes. a waste of fuckin space. space monkey. i will eat<br />
them or they will eat me. are we moving?”<br />
hours later he reached the bamboo chimes from their tarpaulin<br />
wrapping. “frozen to themselves. the wind howls through my thermal<br />
longjohns. no sound. only the ice and my flute.” his grass skirt was solid,<br />
stuck to <strong>it</strong>self. “ there is no symmetry, only the ice. the water of<br />
everything. nothing. all is illusion. i am gone. i am not.<br />
minutes later he came to on all fours. “no scales in infin<strong>it</strong>y dave.<br />
no scales in infin<strong>it</strong>y. i will listen to the ice. my flute will join the music of<br />
all that is.” he put his ear to the ice. there was an almighty silence. the<br />
cold filled his ear and then <strong>it</strong> filled his brain. then he was dead.<br />
hours later he was one w<strong>it</strong>h the ice. his flute stood up erect from<br />
the ice. he was dead.<br />
One minute later, four big tyres, supporting a large land rover,<br />
pulled up on the ice, alongside his head. "Ok you guys, you know the<br />
drill. Put him in the trunk." Footsteps on the snowy ice.<br />
"Goddam, boss this stuff's slippery."<br />
"Boss, think you better come look at this."<br />
"What? What's to see? Just get him up off the ground and into the<br />
trunk."<br />
He had a new tune going round his head. He wrote the chords down on a<br />
match box. "Sh<strong>it</strong>, yeah, I think this one's in one hundred and sixty four<br />
eleven time." He chuckles to himself. "Hot damn. The good old days are<br />
coming back."<br />
"Boss?"<br />
"Ok. Ok."
"It's his head. His face. It's stuck to the ice."<br />
"What's w<strong>it</strong>h you guys. We've planned for this. You know we have.<br />
Get the goddam primus stove out. Hot water is what we need. We'll have<br />
some coffee while we're at <strong>it</strong>. Jeez this place is the end. Cold, or what?"<br />
As the strong dark espresso eased his troubled mind, he whistled<br />
Bridge over Troubled Water to himself. "I kept telling you to step on the<br />
gas Morelloid."<br />
"Yeah sure boss, and you also kept telling me to play fuckin riffs<br />
on my goddam tenor, while I was tryna drive. And I'm pretty sure, even<br />
out here, that aint strictly legal. I coulda lost points off my license pal."<br />
They pour hot water over his Paul's frozen face, till eventually<br />
there's a thaw between him and the ice. Dave shoots each of the dogs in<br />
the head to accompanying yelps. They dump him in the trunk and drive<br />
off.<br />
"Hey Paul, yeah, <strong>it</strong>'s Braxton here, yeah. Listen man there's this<br />
guy over in England they reckon plays even more anodyne tone than you<br />
man, more bland even, like he's the fucken total BLANDMEISTER or<br />
somethin'"<br />
"Sorry, are you chewing something Anthony? I can't make out what<br />
you're saying."<br />
"There's this guy in England man, alto player who I think you<br />
should hear. A real SLIGHT kinda tone, almost nothing there you dig?<br />
Name's Dank-somethin'. Some kinda dank name y'know. Mystical cat<br />
too, does the Wh<strong>it</strong>e Voodoo apparently. Married to a black chick. Well,<br />
kinda black i guess."<br />
"You still fooling around w<strong>it</strong>h the flute?"<br />
"Yeah man, 'Fool's Bamboo' as they say. I gotta try & learn <strong>it</strong><br />
though, for this thing w<strong>it</strong>h Marilyn. Got this booking at a pasta joint up<br />
in Vancouver.”<br />
Later, after Braxton was gone off the phone & everything had fallen<br />
back into stillness, Paul Desmond lay awake staring at the clapboard<br />
ceiling. This Dankworth business was beginning to disturb him. This<br />
wasn't the first time someone had tried to hip him to this English guy.<br />
Saxophone tone like milk in water. Plays w<strong>it</strong>h almost no attack, no<br />
inflection. Nothing there behind the sound. Almost no sound at all, if<br />
reports were true. Nothing there man, no feeling, no soul.<br />
Shadows run towards you. The night pulls you into <strong>it</strong>s vortex.<br />
Flicker of stars. Naked skin in firelight. The distorted faces of the<br />
dancers. Blood. Feathers. A black cockerel. Unspeakable r<strong>it</strong>es hidden,<br />
veiled. The low throb of drums always there in the distance. Ghost<br />
trains passing in his sleep.<br />
"Paul, Paul, wake the fuck up! You were screaming."<br />
Lauretta stands in the doorway in laddered stockings. Moonlight<br />
silvering the edge of her hair. Smoking a goddamn cigarette & breath<br />
loaded w<strong>it</strong>h Jim Beam. Or Wild Turkey...Too late to tell anyway, the
ottle comes flying right at him, shattering in the corner. Broken glass<br />
raining down like falling stars.<br />
"okay, that's <strong>it</strong> you goddam unreasonable fuckin whore." He picked<br />
up the broken bottle got out of bed and walked towards her, her drunken<br />
face in the centre of his radar scanner.<br />
“Oh jeez, I'm so scared. Is he back in his goddam jesus mood<br />
again?" She started to smile but the broken glass interrupted the<br />
movement of muscle. Her skin broke. His fist came in behind the bottle.<br />
"All you ever fuckin do is swear and cuss me, you fucking b<strong>it</strong>ch."<br />
Over and over he stabs her, in the neck, the chest, her hands as they try<br />
to defend herself, her stomach.<br />
When <strong>it</strong>'s all over he looks at the blood dripping from the bamboo<br />
chimes. This is the only tragedy he sees; that his chimes are sullied. He<br />
is glad he's finally smashed the sh<strong>it</strong>ty life out of her. He asks himself how<br />
long he's been enduring this wreck of a woman thrashing around in his<br />
space, contaminating the air, the peace, the acoustic.<br />
Taking the smallest of the flutes in his shaking, bloodsoaked hand<br />
he puts <strong>it</strong> into a backpack and starts to pack. "Think <strong>it</strong>'s time to head<br />
north. No more commerce and trade and too much brute ugliness. Gotta<br />
go." He is whispering. "Gotta go." He is whimpering. He is softly crying.<br />
Like he used to in the cupboard, under the stairs when he was a boy,<br />
listening for the creak of footsteps that preceded his release. He used to<br />
whisper to himself "<strong>it</strong>'ll all be okay." Over and over. "It'll all be okay.<br />
Don't worry." Then he'd make up tunes, silently, in his mind.<br />
Slinging his backpack over his shoulder her steps over her body.<br />
Something wheezes. Air or a fart, or something coming out of her. "Head<br />
for the snow, buddy. Head for the snow. There's nothing and no one here<br />
for you."<br />
King Of Dogsh<strong>it</strong> & Twigs<br />
“All contemporary musical life is dominated by the commod<strong>it</strong>y form…”<br />
“Yeah, maybe, but listen to this…”<br />
A familiar hellish skronking noise, BBBBAaaauugggghh!!!, spl<strong>it</strong> notes,<br />
reedsequeak…<br />
“Beautiful, man, just beautiful"
The language of music is qu<strong>it</strong>e different from the language of<br />
intentional<strong>it</strong>y. It contains a theological dimension. What <strong>it</strong> has to say is<br />
simultaneously revealed and concealed. Its Idea is the divine Name which<br />
has been given shape. It is demythologized prayer, rid of efficacious<br />
magic. It is the human attempt, doomed as ever, to name the Name, not<br />
to communicate meanings.<br />
Who could have foretold this New Orleans revival, nearly twentyfive<br />
years after Bunk Johnson acquired his new teeth?<br />
"Listen man, I'll tell you a l<strong>it</strong>tle secret: The most drastic example of<br />
standardization of presumably individualized features is to be found in<br />
so-called improvisations. Even though jazz musicians still improvise in<br />
practice, their improvisations have become so "normalized" as to enable a<br />
whole terminology to be developed to express the standard devices of<br />
individualization: a terminology which in turn is ballyhooed by jazz<br />
public<strong>it</strong>y agents to foster the myth of pioneer artisanship and at the<br />
same time flatter the fans by apparently allowing them to peep behind<br />
the curtain and get the inside story. This pseudo-individualization is<br />
prescribed by the standardization of the framework. The latter is so rigid<br />
that the freedom <strong>it</strong> allows for any sort of improvisation is severely<br />
delim<strong>it</strong>ed. Improvisations — passages where spontaneous action of<br />
individuals is perm<strong>it</strong>ted ("Swing <strong>it</strong> boys") — are confined w<strong>it</strong>hin the walls<br />
of the harmonic and metric scheme. In a great many cases, such as the<br />
"break" of pre-swing jazz, the musical function of the improvised detail is<br />
determined completely by the scheme: the break can be nothing other<br />
than a disguised cadence. <strong>Here</strong>, very few possibil<strong>it</strong>ies for actual<br />
improvisation remain, due to the necess<strong>it</strong>y of merely melodically<br />
circumscribing the same underlying harmonic functions. Since these<br />
possibil<strong>it</strong>ies were very quickly exhausted, stereotyping of improvisatory<br />
details speedily occurred. Thus, standardization of the norm enhances in<br />
a purely technical way standardization of <strong>it</strong>s own deviation — pseudoindividualization.<br />
"This subservience of improvisation to standardization explains<br />
two main socio-psychological qual<strong>it</strong>ies of popular music. One is the fact<br />
that the detail remains openly connected w<strong>it</strong>h the underlying scheme so<br />
that the listener always feels on safe ground. The choice in individual<br />
alterations is so small that the perpetual recurrence of the same<br />
variations is a reassuring signpost of the identical behind them. The<br />
other is the function of "subst<strong>it</strong>ution" — the improvisatory features forbid<br />
their being grasped as musical events in themselves. They can be<br />
received only as embellishments. It is a well-known fact that in daring<br />
jazz arrangements worried notes, dirty notes, in other words, false notes,<br />
play a conspicuous role. They are apperceived as exc<strong>it</strong>ing stimuli only<br />
because they are corrected by the ear to the right note. This, however, is<br />
only an extreme instance of what happens less conspicuously in all<br />
individualization in popular music. Any harmonic boldness, any chord
which does not fall strictly w<strong>it</strong>hin the simplest harmonic scheme<br />
demands being apperceived as "false", that is, as a stimulus which<br />
carries w<strong>it</strong>h <strong>it</strong> the unambiguous prescription to subst<strong>it</strong>ute for <strong>it</strong> the right<br />
detail, or rather the naked scheme. Understanding popular music means<br />
obeying such commands for listening. Popular music commands <strong>it</strong>s own<br />
listening hab<strong>it</strong>s... dig?"<br />
Cool Burnin' W<strong>it</strong>h The Chet Baker Quintet (1965)<br />
The dry nylon landscape stretches out, an orange and purple blur.<br />
Air crackles w<strong>it</strong>h atatic. Hairball tumbleweeds. Nail clippings, some sort<br />
of fur...Brown bottles, cottonballs, a blackened spoon.<br />
Scrape of eyeball on motel carpet. Brown afternoon light. Light<br />
sucked from the room, out through dust-colored curtains...<br />
The dry tongue searches for moisture. Skull a pulse of hard pain.<br />
The sink, get to the fucken sink... Scudding water into his gaping mouth<br />
triggers splintering teeth... ACHE…Water that tastes like chalk, like<br />
blood…<br />
"Aw, sh<strong>it</strong>, fuck sh<strong>it</strong>..."<br />
Chet Baker clicks the overhead light, shaves w<strong>it</strong>h trembling longfingered<br />
hands, squinting into the foxed mirror. Ravines run vertically<br />
down the ruined cliff of his face. 'Craggy good looks' - ahem yes, takes<br />
some fuckin' maintenance these days...<br />
A stay-pressed button-down shirt from the cardboard su<strong>it</strong>case.<br />
Pomade for the unwashed hair. Good as fuckin' new.<br />
Now, just a quick l<strong>it</strong>tle taste while stocks last, then maybe have me<br />
a good look thru the old address book...<br />
"To absent friends..."<br />
* * *<br />
The puppies thrashed and yelped w<strong>it</strong>h exc<strong>it</strong>ement. YAP YAP YAP<br />
YAP! Their l<strong>it</strong>tle bellies slapping and sk<strong>it</strong>tering on the parquet floor. Paws<br />
slipping out from under them as they scurried towards the telephone<br />
table, where they clamboured ontop of eachother, wheezing and panting<br />
and yelping until Mrs. Desmond lifted the receiver.<br />
"Hello, Desmond residence..."<br />
A voice like desert wind, husks of breath almost devoid of life, a<br />
dry sucking sound came from the earpiece. A vampyric rustling, almost a<br />
death rattle...but urgent and alive w<strong>it</strong>h suppressed need. She almost had<br />
to hold the phone at arms length w<strong>it</strong>h revulsion.<br />
"No, Mister Baker, I'm afraid Paul isn't here right now. No, I don't<br />
know when he will be back, he's out on tour at the moment. Yes, I'll be<br />
sure he gets your message..."
Not given to strong drink, she nevertheless had to pour herself a<br />
gin & tonic and sat hugging herself by the dogbasket until long after the<br />
dachshund pups had fallen back to sleep.<br />
Chet Baker: Hauntingly beautiful, perpetually troubled. Baker<br />
wore his dark su<strong>it</strong>s and wh<strong>it</strong>e shirts w<strong>it</strong>h an insouciance only a jazz<br />
legend could muster.<br />
1941 Martin trumpet.<br />
“Basically, all the great trumpet players, Miles, Chet, all played a<br />
particular brand of trumpet called a Martin, made in Wisconsin.”<br />
Now that we are going on a trip...<br />
“If my decomposing carcass helps nourish the roots of a juniper<br />
tree or the wings of a vulture – that is immortal<strong>it</strong>y enough for me. And as<br />
much as anyone deserves.”<br />
He simply fell out of the window…<br />
An automobile is just a tool<br />
Chet Baker like a shadow passing through the bright afternoon.<br />
Yellow flowers by the roadside. Haze of dust. Elbowing aside the<br />
Mexicans as he moves through the market stalls. Finally selecting a large<br />
& already battered-looking straw hat. A few scattered pesos, eyes<br />
invisible behind shades.<br />
“YOU ARE NOW LEAVING NEW MEXICO – ‘LAND OF<br />
ENCHANTMENT’ ”<br />
Dead roadsigns l<strong>it</strong>ter the desert. Cracked lips whistling an old<br />
tune: “Where The Columbines Grow…”<br />
Yeah, I'll remember that one, maybe we can work up a head<br />
arrangement. These old frontier songs go down real good w<strong>it</strong>h the<br />
social<strong>it</strong>es. Desmond'll play <strong>it</strong> real purty.<br />
H<strong>it</strong> the interstate up into Colorado, route 25 all the way passing<br />
thru all these dead joints, vultures, buzzards... billboards &<br />
truckstops...whenever he saw a billboard he wanted to tear the son of a<br />
b<strong>it</strong>ch down - specially when <strong>it</strong> had his own face on <strong>it</strong>...<br />
Friday, February 11, 2005<br />
Dear Mr. Braxton,<br />
I have had the good fortune to chance upon your web-log, and<br />
would like to take this opportun<strong>it</strong>y to share w<strong>it</strong>h your readers some<br />
reminiscences of my own.<br />
In the summer of 1958 I found myself in the strange pos<strong>it</strong>ion of<br />
being Tour-Manager to a group of vis<strong>it</strong>ing American jazzmen, a job for<br />
which I was not remotely qualified. It happened that my dear friend Max<br />
Harrison, the noted jazz cr<strong>it</strong>ic, was to have chaperoned the entourage,<br />
but was taken rather ill at the last moment.
So <strong>it</strong> was, then, one warm July evening that I found myself on the<br />
quayside at Harwich wa<strong>it</strong>ing to meet the boat from Holland.<br />
As the vessel hove into sight through the gathering mist, I felt a<br />
sudden and unseasonal chill which penetrated to my very core. But even<br />
at that early hour of the night, the sound of merriment and the tinkling<br />
of glasses preceded the boat across the water.<br />
Soon my charges were assembled in the terminal, and a hearty<br />
band of fellows they seemed to me. Eugene Wright, dwarfed by his<br />
double bass; Morello, the jester of the bunch w<strong>it</strong>h a team of porters to<br />
carry his jumble of percussion <strong>it</strong>ems to the charabanc; Mr. Brubeck and<br />
Mr Desmond, both the very ep<strong>it</strong>ome of elegance and New World charm,<br />
although I found the bright check of their matching sports-jackets to be<br />
rather dazzling in the low sun. Cordial introductions were made all<br />
around, and we presently were on our way.<br />
It is not necessary here to give full details of our journey from<br />
Harwich, except to say that for one reason or another we were obliged to<br />
make many unscheduled stops, and by the time we approached the<br />
outskirts of London the hour was qu<strong>it</strong>e late. In view of this <strong>it</strong> was decided<br />
that I should put the band up for the night, rather than navigate through<br />
the infernal London traffic in search of a su<strong>it</strong>able hotel.<br />
When we reached Ponders End, my dear wife Edna was at the door<br />
to greet us and the fine aroma of trad<strong>it</strong>ional English Hot-Pot wafted on<br />
the honeysuckled air.<br />
After some confusion during which Mr.Morello managed to inhale<br />
part of the repast, our guests were shown to the spare room where they<br />
were to spend the night.<br />
I do not care to know what went on behind that door, but I dare<br />
say strong liquor and tobacco were taken in some quant<strong>it</strong>y.<br />
home is the hunter...<br />
'Honey, I'm Home'.<br />
He lugged the su<strong>it</strong>case up the wooden porch steps, brushing aside<br />
the yelping dachshunds, and banging his shin hard on the old rocking<br />
chair.<br />
Inside the k<strong>it</strong>chen the fresh smell of floor polish hung in the air.<br />
The gingham checked curtains fluttered gently. The sun was still high<br />
and a warm golden light spilled through the clean sparkling window<br />
pane.<br />
Mrs. Desmond dropped the bright yellow duster when she saw him<br />
there. 'Paul, Paul, where on earth have you been, I've been so worried.<br />
Heavens Honey, I must have called Mister Brubeck a hundred times, and<br />
you know how he hates to be disturbed at home..'<br />
A slight spark of static from her nylons. Tic-tac of heels on the<br />
parquet floor as she crossed to the icebox.
'Yeah, that motherfucker's worse than a goddam priest…’<br />
She chose to ignore this uncharacteristic outburst. Two dry<br />
martinis appeared on the green formica table.<br />
Paul Desmond eased off his brogues & flexed his toes inside his<br />
argyle socks. A runty sausage dog nuzzled up against his feet. Yeah, I'm<br />
home...<br />
That night they lay in their twin beds in the moonl<strong>it</strong> room, unused<br />
to each-other's company: 'Paul, I'm worried about that smell, <strong>it</strong>'s getting<br />
worse...'<br />
In the k<strong>it</strong>chen the dogs kept sniffing around the su<strong>it</strong>case,<br />
whimpering and scrabbling at the corners.<br />
He was awake before dawn, dragging the goddam case in a trail of<br />
slime and gore out thru the back door, trying not to bump too loudly on<br />
the wooden steps. Okay, get the sonofab<strong>it</strong>ch into the garage.<br />
He took the yard rake and covered his tracks. In the house the<br />
dogs were already licking at the bloody seepage. The floor would have to<br />
be washed and polished again, that's for sure.<br />
they attempt to represent complex philosophical truths<br />
“These our actors,<br />
As I foretold you, were all spir<strong>it</strong>s and<br />
Are melted into air, into thin air:<br />
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,<br />
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,<br />
The solemn temples, the great globe <strong>it</strong>self,<br />
Yea, all which <strong>it</strong> inher<strong>it</strong>, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,<br />
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff<br />
As dreams are made on, and our l<strong>it</strong>tle life<br />
Is rounded w<strong>it</strong>h a sleep.”<br />
'VIDEO CAMERAS ARE IN OPERATION IN THIS AREA'<br />
||¬|`\`_---------_*<br />
ARCHIVE MATERIAL, source unknown<br />
they have never once met. they were once at the same party. at<br />
this point they both had moustaches. miles davis was cajoling cecil<br />
saying "you're a wh<strong>it</strong>e motherflipper cecil, all you play is goddam<br />
motherflippin wh<strong>it</strong>e classical crap. you says <strong>it</strong>'s the blues but <strong>it</strong> ain't."<br />
apparently cecil got on the piano and was joined by mary lou williams<br />
and they played some very down home church music. paul desmond who<br />
was there having just given anthony braxton some saxophone playing<br />
tips jumped up all exc<strong>it</strong>ed and challenged cecil to play some monk. cecil<br />
taylor got very enthused, started sayin "if i'm gonna play monk the<br />
goddam piano has to be jammed in the k<strong>it</strong>chen doorway." so they all<br />
start humping this grand piano out of the study into the k<strong>it</strong>chen doorway<br />
and indeed cecil did do some very nice rend<strong>it</strong>ions of monk tunes. then he<br />
gets up, and climbs out the window, and down the fire escape just as<br />
ornette walks in the front door. this is the closest these two out cats ever<br />
came to meeting. also out of this party came a life long friendship<br />
between braxton and desmond, both of whom, as <strong>it</strong> happens, shared a<br />
love for sausage dogs. and of course the cecil mary lou duet album. but<br />
what did ornette get out of the whole thing? "sweet f.a. man. story of my<br />
goddam life." were ornette's words.
An Appreciation of Sergey Kuryokhin: On the<br />
Occasion of a Reissue of Some Combinations<br />
of Fingers and Passion<br />
By Seth Watter<br />
The philosopher Didi-Huberman wr<strong>it</strong>es of hysteria that <strong>it</strong> is “a<br />
thousand forms, in none.” All the attempts of Professor Charcot and his<br />
colleagues at the Salpêtrière to photograph hysterical women, in the<br />
name of objective science, were doomed to fail; because a still image of a<br />
hysteric is essentially only the picture of an interm<strong>it</strong>tence, a gap between<br />
the phases of a hysterical attack. The actual phenomenon is an<br />
unpredictable unfolding of contradictory states, agony, jouissance, terror,<br />
hope, dementia, insight...<br />
So <strong>it</strong> is w<strong>it</strong>h the work of Sergey Kuryokhin, whose music flirts w<strong>it</strong>h<br />
hysteria. And so <strong>it</strong> is w<strong>it</strong>h the wr<strong>it</strong>er who attempts to describe this<br />
music, condemned to record in words only interm<strong>it</strong>tences: for the real<br />
substance of Kuryokhin’s art is the trans<strong>it</strong>ion from one mode to another,<br />
each style in isolation telling us nothing. What is being told is the story<br />
of an instrument, the piano, and <strong>it</strong>s circu<strong>it</strong>ous route between past and<br />
future.<br />
The distant past (the 19 th century)—an illustrious history of<br />
composers, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin, all bourgeois,
aristocrats, relics of feudalism. The recent past (the revolution, Stalin,<br />
the Cold War)—a Soviet campaign to renew interest in popular folk<br />
forms, music of the rural poor, a proletarian music. The present, the<br />
time of Kuryokhin’s matur<strong>it</strong>y (1981-1996)—Glasnost, Perestroika, the<br />
loosening of cultural oppression and renewed trade w<strong>it</strong>h the Western<br />
world, the rapid deterioration of the USSR as a world power; which also<br />
meant a renewed interest in jazz, a music suppressed by government on<br />
and off since <strong>it</strong>s formative years. The future—a reconciliation of the<br />
different phases of Russian art, a music both national and international,<br />
structured and improvised, populist and avant-garde, a music recklessly<br />
tossed into the arena of world culture.<br />
Some Combinations of Fingers and Passion (1991) reflects<br />
something of this matrix. How much, I am unsure; but certainly <strong>it</strong> is one<br />
of the late Soviet Union’s greatest achievements. And <strong>it</strong> emerged, joyous,<br />
exuberant, august and consummative, at the same historical moment <strong>it</strong>s<br />
motherland was on the precipice of a great collapse and dissolution. “A<br />
poet’s speech begins a great way off… The eclipses of poets are not<br />
foretold in the calendar” (Tsvetaeva). What seems inopportune may be<br />
the blessing of foresight.<br />
In a recent article (Signal to Noise, no. 56), I wrote the following:<br />
***<br />
Contradiction is at the heart of Kuryokhin’s career; <strong>it</strong> is one of the<br />
hallmarks of his genius. Crudely speaking, these contradictions number<br />
among themselves several binaries: constraint/freedom,<br />
trad<strong>it</strong>ion/progress, affectation/spontane<strong>it</strong>y, perhaps even—a<br />
mythological conception of East/West. No musician before or since has<br />
so fully embodied the contradictions of the Soviet Union while making<br />
music that so gloriously transcends them, making each pair of<br />
oppos<strong>it</strong>ions fissure in every direction until they explode into pure force.<br />
That was in reference to a concert of 1988 (the recently issued Absolutely<br />
Great!). I think, three years later, the description does not hold qu<strong>it</strong>e so<br />
much water, if only because these heterodox influences on the musician<br />
have finally been condensed into a form so polished as to veil the<br />
workmanship from which <strong>it</strong> was painstakingly crafted. The pianist does<br />
not want postmodern distanciation à la John Zorn; he has become tired<br />
of these myriad forms that do not congeal in the work of art so much as<br />
s<strong>it</strong> side by side under the arb<strong>it</strong>rary banner of the ‘artwork’. There are no<br />
longer abrupt shifts from jazz to opera, from rock to waltz; that sort of<br />
aesthetic violence went out w<strong>it</strong>h the bathwater somewhere en route from<br />
The Ways of Freedom (1981) to Some Combinations; or perhaps <strong>it</strong> was<br />
merely shouldered onto Kuryokhin’s other longterm project, Orkestra<br />
Pop-Mekanika, the multi-media ensemble (music, film, performance,<br />
dance, zoology) which I called “a tireless effort to keep the state of Soviet
culture in a permanent state of carnival.” Some Combinations of Fingers<br />
and Passion is the result of a great purification: not of Kuryokhin’s<br />
prodigious musical vocabulary, but of the antagonisms which previously<br />
gave <strong>it</strong> voice.<br />
Speaking of The Ways of Freedom.—A wonderful first recording,<br />
completely anarcho-destructive of <strong>it</strong>s idiom(s) used as cannon fodder for<br />
blunderbusses of improvised runs, manic tw<strong>it</strong>tering like a possessed<br />
pianola (unclear whether the speed of the recording was changed, the<br />
keys sound so tinny and unreal), supremely gestural, each line a<br />
percussive blow (aimed at who?), the instrument opened up for<br />
dissection and vivisection—l<strong>it</strong>erally!—slapping and bruising the insides,<br />
playing all <strong>it</strong>s hammers, rollers, strings, springs—pounding away in the<br />
very joy of destruction! (Joe Milazzo of One Final Note: “the sound of a<br />
young man, reared in a very particular trad<strong>it</strong>ion of instrumental<br />
virtuos<strong>it</strong>y, discovering and delighting in his powers of musical<br />
subversion.”) The music was considered so repugnant to official taste<br />
that <strong>it</strong> was secretly recorded and smuggled to England as the inaugural<br />
release of producer Leo Feigin’s eponymous label.<br />
Is <strong>it</strong> jazz? Underneath all the obfuscating factors, something of<br />
that art form remains. It is not often that jazz shows <strong>it</strong>self naked and<br />
unabashed in Kuryokhin’s music (though he did briefly tackle Joplin’s<br />
“Maple Leaf Rag” in 1984). It bears repeating, though, that anyone<br />
playing jazz in Russia would be implicated in a complicated legacy. “The<br />
Music of the Gross” (Gorky, 1928):<br />
In the deep stillness resounds the dry knocking of an idiotic hammer.<br />
One, two, three, ten, twenty strokes, and after them, like a mud ball<br />
splashing into clear water, a wild whistle screeches; and then there are<br />
rumblings, wails and howls like the smarting of a metal pig, the shriek of<br />
a donkey, or the amorous croaking of a monstrous frog. This insulting<br />
chaos of insan<strong>it</strong>y pulses to a throbbing rhythm. Listening for a few<br />
minutes to these wails, one involuntarily imagines an orchestra of<br />
sexually driven madmen conducted by a man-stallion brandishing a<br />
huge gen<strong>it</strong>al member.<br />
(A film made around this time, Taxi Blues [Lungin, 1990], helped cement<br />
this association of jazz w<strong>it</strong>h Western decadence; a cab driver who<br />
despises his saxophone-playing neighbor is unashamed to say he misses<br />
the guidance of strong centralized government.)<br />
I think there is reticence in the early Kuryokhin to let jazz be jazz.<br />
Thus he made his music distinctly inhuman, certainly asexual, and<br />
buried his Willie “The Lion” riffs beneath a torrent of atonal thrashingabout<br />
and pointillist abstraction—at loggerheads w<strong>it</strong>h his muse.<br />
***
No such shame on Fingers and Passion; <strong>it</strong> is a sustained<br />
med<strong>it</strong>ation on jazz, not just the harmonics of jazz but the swing and the<br />
feel of jazz. Of course, he couldn’t entirely throw off the her<strong>it</strong>age of<br />
virtuosic Russian artistry, beautiful and baroque; I would say Kuryokhin<br />
never got qu<strong>it</strong>e as earthy as his famous contemporaries, the Ganelin Trio.<br />
But “A Combination of Power and Passion” is one of the few occasions I<br />
know of when he really dug deep into post-war American jazz,<br />
particularly Dave Brubeck’s music—the song’s subt<strong>it</strong>le, after all, is “Blue<br />
Rondo a la Russ”. The West Coast master’s rhythmic innovations must<br />
have left their imprint on Kuryokhin, who had l<strong>it</strong>tle to no respect for<br />
standard jazz time signatures. If on previous recordings the Russian<br />
pianist let his hands compartmentalize the keyboard, ag<strong>it</strong>ating each<br />
other, creating a fractured-hysteric aesthetic, here they work together<br />
w<strong>it</strong>h interlocking melodies and rhythmic counterpoint. All the effort of<br />
moving between styles is so gradual and mellifluous, the listener is<br />
generally unable to pinpoint the decisive moment of transformation. By<br />
varying the pace and delivery of Brubeck’s central theme, gaining<br />
momentum w<strong>it</strong>h a sportsman’s fervor or slowing down in a staccato<br />
articulation, he allows room for new aspects to emerge, aspects which<br />
derail the music and force <strong>it</strong> to ceaselessly evolve. As soon as one has<br />
grasped the theme of a cluster of repet<strong>it</strong>ions, already the music seems<br />
elsewhere. The most sublime improvisations operate in this manner, like
the churning factory of the unconscious, bringing b<strong>it</strong>s and fragments of<br />
memory-experience to light before burying them beneath revisions,<br />
detours, reversals and variations.<br />
The verdict is still out on whether or not God exists; but if he did,<br />
Sergey Kuryokhin would have been his gift to the piano. The half-hour<br />
“Combination of Passion and Feelings” which begins the album is the<br />
kind of declamation orators only dream of, a tour-de-force as muscular<br />
as a Cossack, delicate and pastoral like a wheat field. There is love,<br />
terror, sentiment, festiv<strong>it</strong>y, vertigo, a whole spectrum of emotions on<br />
display w<strong>it</strong>hin this performance. Yet to isolate <strong>it</strong>s phases, to hold them<br />
up as illustrations of a musical lexicon, would destroy what makes <strong>it</strong> so<br />
fascinating, which is the dissolving of one into the other: the process, the<br />
passing-through.<br />
“A Combination of Hands and Feet” betrays the artist’s penchant<br />
for humor. He had a b<strong>it</strong>ing w<strong>it</strong>, but is mostly remembered for a playful<br />
jackdaw mental<strong>it</strong>y. The brand of slobbery he kept in abeyance w<strong>it</strong>h his<br />
hands more often than not came to fru<strong>it</strong>ion through the voice. Not that<br />
the pianist sings: one is more likely to distinguish gurgles, cries,<br />
squawks or whistles. The absurd<strong>it</strong>y of matching such serious music<br />
w<strong>it</strong>h these shrill aleatorics is not unlike the solemn<strong>it</strong>y of Wile E. Coyote<br />
crushed beneath another russet-colored boulder. “Hands and Feet”,<br />
part-ballad, part-waltz, is the closest he comes to genuine tenderness—<br />
which is never w<strong>it</strong>hout a wink.<br />
“A Combination of Boogie and Woogie” is the most straightforward<br />
piece Kuryokhin ever performed as a solo artist, playing in the two-beat<br />
style of American piano giants James P. Johnson, Luckey Roberts and<br />
Meade Lewis. It’s close to gutbucket, but specifically Russian w<strong>it</strong>h <strong>it</strong>s<br />
sense of high drama and capac<strong>it</strong>y for florid embellishment. Even if <strong>it</strong><br />
isn’t qu<strong>it</strong>e the barrelhouse, <strong>it</strong> makes good on the promise of <strong>it</strong>s t<strong>it</strong>le; for<br />
once, there is reverence on the performer’s part for the standard beat,<br />
and as anyone who likes a good boogie-woogie knows, that striding<br />
rhythm is simply unstoppable.<br />
Poets inv<strong>it</strong>e us to dream, wr<strong>it</strong>es Bachelard. One says there are<br />
moonbeams in the linen closet; Reason sees through this logical aporia,<br />
but the imagination continues to be stimulated, carried aloft to new<br />
heights. Kuryokhin’s reverie was one in which East and West were not<br />
only un<strong>it</strong>ed, but had lost all meaning: a daydream of a distant future, or<br />
a distant impossible.
GENDER & MUSIC: 'IN OUR DIFFERENT<br />
RHYTHMS TOGETHER'<br />
By Maggie Nicols<br />
Maybe one day, there will no longer be the need for special features<br />
on gender; a post Patriarchal Cap<strong>it</strong>alist society will experience genuine<br />
divers<strong>it</strong>y & humankind's multidimensional difference will be what unifies<br />
us. Until then, I'm happy to grapple w<strong>it</strong>h the contradictions of gender &<br />
music in our time.<br />
Is there such a thing, outside cultural cond<strong>it</strong>ioning, as feminine or<br />
masculine music? I can only wr<strong>it</strong>e from the lim<strong>it</strong>ed perspective of history,<br />
personal pol<strong>it</strong>ical experience & the times we live in now.<br />
So many of my most precious musical moments are shared w<strong>it</strong>h<br />
other women now that sometimes I forget what <strong>it</strong> was like before the<br />
women's liberation movement, when meaning & value was defined<br />
predominantly by men. L<strong>it</strong>erature, music, religion, pol<strong>it</strong>ics, you name <strong>it</strong>;<br />
men battled ideas amongst themselves & women were mainly their<br />
muses, an influence behind the scenes: “behind every great man,” etc.<br />
When I first started listening to jazz, I naively believed that men<br />
were more biologically su<strong>it</strong>ed to playing instruments. It was what I saw;<br />
female singers & male instrumentalists. The pop music I listened &<br />
danced to; soul, rock 'n roll, all the same. Of course there were also male<br />
singers in all those musics but very few female instrumentalists. It was a<br />
few years before I saw saxophonist Vi Redd down Ronnie Scott's jazz club<br />
in Gerard Street. Even then, <strong>it</strong> was said she played like a man.<br />
I yearned to be part of the wonderful music I heard. I was in love<br />
w<strong>it</strong>h music of all kinds but particularly jazz. Unfortunately many male<br />
musicians mistook my love of music for a willingness to be manipulated<br />
or even coerced into giving them sexual favours. Male acceptance &<br />
approval was everything to me which left me vulnerable to my own<br />
romantic notions about their beautiful souls & a prey to casual sexism. I<br />
was sweet sixteen & hungry to be a musician, which, given what I knew,<br />
meant being a singer. I got my first break singing in a strip club & later<br />
was taken under the wing of the brilliant pioneer of bebop in Br<strong>it</strong>ain,<br />
trumpeter & pianist Dennis Rose, who played in North London pubs.<br />
In the jazz world there was an ambivalence if not downright dislike<br />
towards all but the most established female singers ; an assumption that<br />
they would be rubbish & / or a resentment of their place at the centre of<br />
the audience's attention. However, male front line instrumentalists rarely
came in for the same hostil<strong>it</strong>y even though some of them were perfectly<br />
capable of completely ignoring their supporting rhythm sections when<br />
they took a solo.<br />
My need to be accepted as a bona fide pract<strong>it</strong>ioner of a music that<br />
moved & inspired me so profoundly was probably one of the major if<br />
unconscious driving forces behind my developing my voice as an<br />
instrument. It was also intensive listening to a huge divers<strong>it</strong>y of<br />
brilliantly expressive instrumentalists even if they were all male.<br />
Dennis started me on the road to leg<strong>it</strong>imacy as a musician.<br />
Through my work w<strong>it</strong>h him I got to sing w<strong>it</strong>h other musicians & then<br />
there came a time when I basked in their praise & approval. I was better<br />
than those other 'chick singers'; my low self esteem fed a feeling of false<br />
superior<strong>it</strong>y to my singing sisters.<br />
Later, as I grew in confidence, I occasionally took delight in going<br />
along to jam sessions where I wasn't known & seeing the conspiratorial<br />
rolled eyes & the low expectations of a female singer turn to respect &<br />
amazement once I started singing.<br />
Confidence is the operative word here cos even now w<strong>it</strong>h all my<br />
experience, I can suddenly feel like I don't deserve to be in the hallowed<br />
company of 'real musicians' (men); can doubt my musicianship & feel<br />
shriveled up & small, especially around musicians who knew me a long<br />
time ago. It doesn't happen so often now but enough to want to do all I<br />
can to support other women starting out. I'm saddened to hear that so<br />
many are still getting a hard time.<br />
There was another man that I learnt a lot from & started singing<br />
w<strong>it</strong>h in 1968 when I was twenty. Drummer & free improvisation<br />
innovator & enabler John Stevens honoured & adored the female voice.<br />
He was one of the first musicians I knew to fully integrate the human<br />
voice into his ensembles; we weren't just occasionally decorative or<br />
floating ethereally on top. We were another equal but distinctive colour in<br />
the overall sound like the difference between a trombone & a trumpet or<br />
gu<strong>it</strong>ar. Even in free improvisation this was radical stuff.<br />
John turned everything upside down for everyone, women & men<br />
alike. He was a pioneer of a collective approach to music which also<br />
liberated individual<strong>it</strong>y. Even in the midst of a profoundly sexist music<br />
scene I have to give cred<strong>it</strong> to those men whose human<strong>it</strong>y sometimes<br />
managed to transcend gender stereotypes and oppression. There were &<br />
are many men who I consider as part of the wonderful extended family of<br />
musicians that I am so blessed to be a part of but for a while, as the only
woman, I had a period where I became 'one of the boys'. Like many other<br />
female musicians, before we met each other, I did a pretty good job of <strong>it</strong>,<br />
raving w<strong>it</strong>h the best of them, & <strong>it</strong> was great cos at least I was respected<br />
as a 'fellow' musician. I still needed that male approval.<br />
Apart from w<strong>it</strong>h singer Julie Tippetts one of my dearest musical<br />
soul mates, & in the revelatory voice workshops I started running in<br />
1969, most of my intimate musical experiences had been w<strong>it</strong>h men. Then<br />
came my exposure to the women's liberation movement in the mid<br />
seventies & everything changed again! After mainly being the only<br />
woman in all male ensembles, I was now immersed in an all female<br />
world. I fell in love w<strong>it</strong>h women. I started to understand that what had<br />
happened to me wasn't just personal, <strong>it</strong> was pol<strong>it</strong>ical. I came out as a<br />
lesbian & I wanted to sing w<strong>it</strong>h other female musicians. The Feminist<br />
Improvising Group was born & although we're in danger of being wr<strong>it</strong>ten<br />
out of history, we had a huge impact on the improvised music scene. We<br />
were loved & hated. We were provocative & perversely diverse in class,<br />
sexual<strong>it</strong>y, race, disabil<strong>it</strong>y & musical background & technique. It was my<br />
first experience of singing w<strong>it</strong>h women instrumentalists & <strong>it</strong> was<br />
wonderful.<br />
We didn't set out to call ourselves FIG but when I got us our first<br />
gig at a 'Music for Socialism' event, as the Women's Improvising Group,<br />
the leaflets came out w<strong>it</strong>h the 'F' word & we took that name on board &<br />
really ran w<strong>it</strong>h <strong>it</strong>! I don't think the organisers realised what they'd<br />
unleashed. We rose to the occasion in ways which both delighted &<br />
threatened.
Above: Photograph by Valerie Wilmer of the first ever gig by The Feminist Improvising<br />
Group, at a ‘Music For Socialism’ event. Corine Liensol, trumpet, Lindsay Cooper bassoon/<br />
saxes, Nicols in the wig, Georgie Born cello & Cathy Williams piano.<br />
The difference that our gender made to me was in the intimacy we<br />
shared before & after as well as during the music. It was in the heady<br />
early days of sisterhood before the inev<strong>it</strong>able realisation that ident<strong>it</strong>y also<br />
contains difference. We were discovering our shared experience of<br />
isolation & discrimination as women in a male dominated world. We were<br />
anarchic & unapologetic about overturning many of the assumptions<br />
about technique. In the beginning <strong>it</strong> was an open pool of improvisers<br />
open to all women, mixed abil<strong>it</strong>y in the conventional sense but each<br />
woman crucial to the overall social virtuos<strong>it</strong>y that our performances<br />
expressed. It was truly liberating to stop worrying, for a while at least,<br />
about what men thought of us. We laughed when over & over we were<br />
asked 'why only women'? as if <strong>it</strong> had escaped the notice of the various<br />
questioners that the major<strong>it</strong>y of ensembles were all male. The listening,<br />
the interaction, the humour, the pol<strong>it</strong>ics, the hanging out. I was finally<br />
one of the women not one of the boys.<br />
FIG opened the door into a whole new world of creative<br />
empowerment & many of us went on to play w<strong>it</strong>h each other in different<br />
combinations & still do to this day. Corine Liensol & I started<br />
'Contradictions' w<strong>it</strong>h Irene Schweizer & dancer Roberta Garrison which I<br />
later developed as an open women's workshop performance group,<br />
involving both improvised & wr<strong>it</strong>ten music, theatre, visuals & dance.<br />
Irene Schweizer founded E.W.I.G (European Women's Group) which<br />
brought in new women like bassist Joelle Leandre & singer Annick<br />
Nozati. One of my favour<strong>it</strong>e group experiences was the first women's<br />
improvised music festival 'Canaille' organised by Dutch trombonist Anne<br />
Marie Roelofs (also an ex FIG member) in Frankfurt. We played in<br />
different combinations & the enthusiasm for each group as we cheered<br />
each other proudly from the side of the stage, was totally uplifting &<br />
everyone excelled even more because of <strong>it</strong>; great music & inspired<br />
performances.<br />
Women playing together & promoting each other against all the<br />
odds brought on the era of more mixed gender groups. I remember cellist<br />
Martin Altena saying how much he preferred playing in groups that were<br />
not exclusively male. The joy I experience when surrendering to the Muse<br />
& trusting myself, the music, the other musicians & each unfolding<br />
moment, happens w<strong>it</strong>h men too but <strong>it</strong> happens more often w<strong>it</strong>h women<br />
or when there are other women present (Maybe my gender influences the<br />
music even when I'm the only woman in the group).
I have just come back from a wonderful experience singing w<strong>it</strong>h<br />
trombonist Gail Brand & a Belgian pianist Marjolaine Charbin that Gail<br />
& I had never met before. We did two gigs - the first one was sheer magic,<br />
a multiplic<strong>it</strong>y of twists & turns. There was a free flow of different &<br />
sometimes simultaneously different dynamics a kind of musical multi<br />
orgasmic multi- tasking. A singer called Martha in the audience said<br />
listening to us as women was different to listening to men, not better,<br />
different.<br />
The second gig was harder because of a grim venue l<strong>it</strong>erally divided<br />
in two by a concrete wall. The music was still strong but constructed<br />
more of struggle rather than trust & <strong>it</strong> was great to be able to share our<br />
feelings about the challenging personal processes we'd just gone<br />
through; less analytical than some discussions I've had or read about the<br />
music but no less insightful & certainly less divisive.<br />
There is a deliriously divine combination of sens<strong>it</strong>iv<strong>it</strong>y & anarchic<br />
wildness I experience w<strong>it</strong>h women when we let ourselves be fearless & let<br />
go of needing to prove ourselves in a still predominantly male music<br />
scene. Is <strong>it</strong> a socialised abil<strong>it</strong>y to surrender to flow & wander & meander<br />
that is harder for men who are maybe more socialised to stay in control?<br />
I cannot generalise too much about gender & music though<br />
because there are men who can be possessed by the music & women<br />
who put up barriers, but in my experience those multidimensional<br />
moods that I love so much in free improvisation are something I<br />
associate most w<strong>it</strong>h all the wonderful women I work w<strong>it</strong>h. Even in bands<br />
where we play tunes, there is a particular dynamic in rehearsals that<br />
makes me feel easier in my skin when I work w<strong>it</strong>h women or at least w<strong>it</strong>h<br />
men that love & respect women's presence & musicianship.<br />
There was one group of male musicians however where I found a<br />
similar openness & freshness; the improvisers I met in the former DDR<br />
(East Germany). They hadn't been overdosed w<strong>it</strong>h the Western stimuli<br />
that had made many of our male artists jaded & cynical & striving to<br />
come up w<strong>it</strong>h ever cleverer concepts. Although due to different<br />
circumstances, the East German musicians, like women, had not been a<br />
major part of the Western music scene, so shared a similar sense of<br />
adventure & exploring new terr<strong>it</strong>ory that can come from being excluded.<br />
When I heard gu<strong>it</strong>arist Joe Sachse & trombonist Hanes Bauer for the<br />
first time I felt like I was enjoying a thriller. I was on the edge of my seat.<br />
It was not stylistic, <strong>it</strong> could go anywhere.<br />
I've noticed that certain male musicians & some of the female<br />
musicians who associate w<strong>it</strong>h them often identify themselves w<strong>it</strong>h one
particular concept or approach –minimalism, deliberately contrasting, etc<br />
– whereas women de-ideologised go where they please. Both have their<br />
strengths & weaknesses but I prefer the open ended approach unless <strong>it</strong>'s<br />
a workshop or I'm exploring freedom through specific pieces which<br />
in<strong>it</strong>ially lim<strong>it</strong> or focus the attention in a particular direction like some of<br />
John Stevens' pieces do.<br />
Women are known for multi-tasking, men for single-minded focus.<br />
Are both genders capable of e<strong>it</strong>her? Yes, surely in the music we can all<br />
shape shift & focus. In the end, let <strong>it</strong> be down to preference rather than<br />
gender.<br />
For me, free improvisation still promises the most freedom from<br />
gender biased lim<strong>it</strong>ations; women lead & focus as well as follow &<br />
surrender & vice versa for men, but no-one is a permanent leader or<br />
follower. This is certainly the case w<strong>it</strong>h the Gathering which I started<br />
hosting twenty years ago. It meets weekly in London & monthly in West<br />
Wales & has recently started in Liverpool.<br />
“The Gathering is a space, place and time where we can build up<br />
confidence in our creativ<strong>it</strong>y; where we can s<strong>it</strong> in silence, sing, play an<br />
instrument, draw, be poetic; prophetic; we could talk in tongues, talk to<br />
each other, to ourselves, talk to voices. We can listen, make sounds;<br />
melodies and noise, soft and loud; leave space, fill <strong>it</strong> up; explore rhythm<br />
and time, chaos and rhyme; lullabies and laments; shyly and boldly be in<br />
our different rhythms together.” 1<br />
I believe that men who associate w<strong>it</strong>h & are willing to learn from women<br />
as we have from men for so long, are discovering new ways to express<br />
their creativ<strong>it</strong>y. Ultimately, the mix of gender, culture, race, class, age &<br />
different abil<strong>it</strong>ies can enthrall & liberate us all.<br />
1 http://www.maggienicols.com/id13.html
YOUTUBE WATCH<br />
Tania Chen/ Shabaka Hutchings/ Mark Sanders<br />
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hmdotrl7AWM<br />
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zeOe9hDs-I<br />
This performance was filmed live by Helen Petts at one of John<br />
Russell’s monthly Mopomoso nights at The Vortex in London (see<br />
www.mopomoso.com and http://www.youtube.com/user/helentonic).<br />
Shabaka Hutchings (pictured above), a truly fine player who was briefly<br />
name-checked in the previous issue of this magazine, is here paired w<strong>it</strong>h<br />
pianist Tania Chen (a classically-trained interpreter of Cage and<br />
Feldman, who has studied w<strong>it</strong>h John Tilbury) and veteran drummer<br />
Mark Sanders. The music begins quietly, gradually swelling from the<br />
silence as the trio feel their way, cautiously echoing each-other’s<br />
instrumental lines. At 6:41, when some melodic agreement/ concord/<br />
coming-together is reached between Chen and Hutchings, the silence is<br />
not allowed to roll to cessation, to applause and the appearance of a false<br />
‘conclusion’. Rather, Chen launches into a monologue – solo<br />
extrapolations on the melodic essence of the previous section – to which<br />
Sanders’ bells impart a further med<strong>it</strong>ative air. Hutchings builds circles
on a recurring pattern, spinning out and out in questioning webs;<br />
threads and journeys, quick forays, a rumbling panic-stricken march<br />
from Sanders’ rumblings and Chen’s lower-keyboard spikiness. When<br />
they reach another silence three minutes into the second clip a similar<br />
transformation could occur – but the applause cuts in and Chen shifts in<br />
her chair, smiling, in some way even embarrassed.<br />
Given the way things start off on the second piece, the direction<br />
seems inev<strong>it</strong>able: Hutchings’ clarinet sets out a kind of off-kilter motorrhythm<br />
momentum into which Chen and Sanders could easily slot. But<br />
when they don’t wholeheartedly join, the turn to quietness is both<br />
unexpected and completely convincing – a hush built from Hutchings’<br />
willingness to gauge the s<strong>it</strong>uation and to respond appropriately, Chen’s<br />
refusal to play except when necessary, and Sanders’ refusal to be the<br />
'up-front' drummer.<br />
Improvisations by one-off groups such as this one may develop in<br />
different ways to those by regular ensembles, which is part of the<br />
exc<strong>it</strong>ement of something like Mopomoso: the necess<strong>it</strong>y of developing new<br />
approaches, of finding ways of working together, leads to a greater sense<br />
of risk, which can spur the musicians on to move outside their comfort<br />
zones. On the other hand, such risk can also generate a tendency<br />
towards pol<strong>it</strong>eness, a laudable desire not to assert oneself over others<br />
creating music that is, in the end, perhaps overly tentative in <strong>it</strong>s<br />
approach. Such p<strong>it</strong>-falls are avoided here, for, while the three musicians<br />
are certainly respectful, paying careful attention to what their trio<br />
partners are doing at any particular moment, they are not afraid to take<br />
their improvisations in unexpected directions, yielding some fine results.<br />
All About Cecil McBee<br />
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slJX2-cyegQ<br />
The name of bassist Cecil McBee may have inadvertently become<br />
associated w<strong>it</strong>h a leading clothing store in Japan, 1 but <strong>it</strong> seems that his<br />
work as a bassist is still too often unacknowledged by both cr<strong>it</strong>ics and<br />
public. That’s a real shame, because his work on Pharoah Sanders’ early<br />
1970s albums for Impulse Records contains a textural richness and an<br />
emotional depth rarely matched in the more one-dimensional role which<br />
the instrument has had to play in much jazz music, perhaps the finest<br />
instance being his solo feature on ‘Let Us Go Into the House of the Lord’,<br />
from Sanders’ ‘Summun Bukmun Umyun.’ The Sanders recordings also<br />
demonstrated that McBee was perfectly capable of playing in a more<br />
conventional, groove-based role, as attested by the hypnotic rhythmic<br />
interplay w<strong>it</strong>h Stanley Clarke on ‘Black Un<strong>it</strong>y’ and ‘Live at the East.’<br />
1<br />
http://www.audiocasefiles.com/ acf_cases/ 10125-mcbee-v-delica-co-
Continuing to work in the ‘spir<strong>it</strong>ual jazz’ vein that characterized Sanders’<br />
output at this time, he recorded as leader for Strata-East: the varied<br />
‘Mutima’ contained ensemble pieces w<strong>it</strong>h the singer Dee Dee<br />
Bridgewater, as well as a feature for two basses played at once.<br />
The more recent video featured here is a podcast made by the ‘Jazz<br />
Video Guy,’ Bret Primack (http://planetbret.com/): <strong>it</strong> documents the<br />
recording sessions for the album ‘Seraphic Light’ by Coltrane tribute<br />
band Saxophone Summ<strong>it</strong> (Joe Lovano and Dave Liebman, joined by Ravi<br />
Coltrane, who replaces the late Michael Brecker). Focusing on McBee, <strong>it</strong><br />
mixes footage of the group laying down one of his compos<strong>it</strong>ions w<strong>it</strong>h<br />
‘talking-heads’ interviews featuring the other musicians (including fellow<br />
veteran Billy Hart). Perhaps one day someone will make a full-length<br />
feature on McBee: for now, this short video provides an intriguing look at<br />
some of his working methods.<br />
John Klemmer – 20 th Century Blues/Late Evening Prayer<br />
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDTFbG7dHWs<br />
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxUa5XcwQbU&feature=related<br />
The work for which John Klemmer has become known is not<br />
exactly my cup of tea – he’s one of the principle culpr<strong>it</strong>s responsible for<br />
the growth of the smooth jazz movement – but, like fellow culpr<strong>it</strong> Grover
Washington Jr., he was actually capable of playing some very fine jazz<br />
saxophone when he felt like <strong>it</strong>. He might never have become an<br />
absolutely top-rank musician anyway, but, by lim<strong>it</strong>ing himself to the<br />
unchallenging world of commercial smooth jazz, he ensured that he<br />
wouldn’t even stand the ghost of a chance. Signed up to Impulse Records<br />
in the mid-70s as one of the new wave of young jazzers, he was seen at<br />
once as a firebrand in the Gato Barbieri/post-Coltrane vein, an<br />
experimental musician (through his use of Echoplex – which, ironically<br />
enough, was the tool which turned him to commercialism), and someone<br />
able to connect w<strong>it</strong>h more popular musical trad<strong>it</strong>ions (his very fine, non-<br />
Impulse record ‘Blowin’ Gold’, which features Pete Cosey as a sideman,<br />
contained a cover of Hendrix’ ‘Third Stone from the Sun’). His tone is<br />
hard and steely, and he has a penchant for building his solos up to<br />
passionate squawks – <strong>it</strong>’s a very direct approach, if not as out-there as<br />
Barbieri’s, and you can see why Impulse had high hopes for Klemmer.<br />
Ne<strong>it</strong>her the image nor the picture qual<strong>it</strong>y on these two videos,<br />
recorded at the 1976 Montreux Jazz Festival, is very good (<strong>it</strong>’s clearly<br />
been transferred from an old VHS), but Klemmer has a solid band to<br />
back him up as he opens w<strong>it</strong>h a solo echoplex ballad feature, which<br />
segues into a driving blues built around the dug-in bass-lines and<br />
comping of Cecil McBee, pianist Tom Canning, and drummer Alphone<br />
Mouzon, best known himself for his fusion work. The second clip is a<br />
vamp-oriented track which contains the same exuberant skronking as<br />
‘Blowin’ Gold’, as well as an enthusiastic Mouzon solo.<br />
Lucio Capece and Christian Kesten<br />
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHg663iQIsc
This is footage of what looks to have been a very focused small<br />
gathering at Labor Sonor, Kule, Berlin, back in December 2006, w<strong>it</strong>h the<br />
musicians s<strong>it</strong>ting in a space that’s barely separate from the audience,<br />
who are w<strong>it</strong>hin touching distance. The atmosphere is one of respectful<br />
openness, and the music <strong>it</strong>self has a similar sense of space w<strong>it</strong>hin <strong>it</strong>,<br />
opening up vistas of silence while at the same time being very intense,<br />
focused, even constricted, claustrophobic in <strong>it</strong>s lim<strong>it</strong>ation of the sound<br />
field to extremely quiet ‘extended techniques.’ In such a context, playing<br />
a conventionally blown note or a recongisable harmonic progression<br />
would come as the biggest shock of all, and <strong>it</strong>’s admirable that such a<br />
radically comm<strong>it</strong>ted approach exists at all, an approach which provides<br />
an intensely absorbing experience. On one level, what we have here is in<br />
some way not ‘real<strong>it</strong>y’ – <strong>it</strong> must take place behind closed doors, in<br />
chambers of quiet – yet at the same time <strong>it</strong> forces a concentration on the<br />
closest details and mechanics of bodily performance and of s<strong>it</strong>uation of<br />
sound, event and gesture in space: in other words, some fundamental<br />
aspects of the human experience.<br />
What does this actually mean in terms of what we can see and<br />
hear in the video clips? Three minutes have gone by and hardly anything<br />
has happened (someone’s mobile phone has unexpectedly gone off, the<br />
loudest sound we’ve heard so far). Capece starts to rotate a violin bow<br />
around the surface of his saxophone bell in a kind of machine rhythm.<br />
Kesten’s hands are clasped between his legs, almost in an att<strong>it</strong>ude of<br />
prayer. He doesn’t sing, he simply breathes audibly. Capece swings a<br />
cardboard tube in circles to make music from the air. Kesten picks up<br />
some tiny plant pots from the floor and rubs them together.<br />
But to go on describing the music in this way wouldn’t do <strong>it</strong><br />
justice, for <strong>it</strong>’s not really concerned w<strong>it</strong>h presenting a narrative sequence<br />
of sound events – at least, not in any developmental sense; although,<br />
given the long periods of silence, even the smallest gesture can assume<br />
great drama, and the music necessarily unfolds along a linear axis,<br />
necessarily exists in unfolding time. Low-qual<strong>it</strong>y video is hardly a<br />
subst<strong>it</strong>ute for being in the same room as the musicians, especially w<strong>it</strong>h<br />
this kind of improvisation, but <strong>it</strong>’s nice to get an extended glimpse at<br />
such an occasion. Just remember to use headphones…
CD REVIEWS INDEX<br />
“Cr<strong>it</strong>icism is always the easiest art.”<br />
- Cornelius Cardew<br />
• AIDA SEVERO – Aida Severo<br />
• ALLEN, CORY – The Fourth Way<br />
• ARGUE, DARCY JAMES – Infernal Machines<br />
• BARNACLED – Charles<br />
• CÔTÉ, MICHEL F./ DONTIGNY, A_ – La Notte Fa<br />
• DIXON, BILL – Tapestries for Small Orchestra<br />
• FUTTERMAN, JOEL – Trans<strong>it</strong>ion One: Solo Piano<br />
• GIGANTOMACHIA – The Naked Future<br />
• HARGROVE, ROY (BIG BAND) – Emergence<br />
• LEE, PEGGY – New Code<br />
• HOULE, VIVIEN – Trieze<br />
• KREBS, ANNETTE/ NAKAMURA, TOSHIMARU – Siyu<br />
• MERSON HESS, DAVE – Music from the film ‘Presence’<br />
• MIMESYS – Mimesys<br />
• PROFOUND SOUND TRIO – Opus De Life<br />
• SCOTT-HERON, GIL – I’m New <strong>Here</strong><br />
• SKARABEE – Tlön<br />
• SMITH, WADADA LEO – Spir<strong>it</strong>ual Dimensions<br />
• SPALDING, ESPERANZA – Esperanza<br />
• SYLVIAN, DAVID – Manafon<br />
• TAZARTÈS, GHEDALIA – Repas Froid<br />
• THE THING – Bag It!<br />
• THE THING – Now and Forever<br />
• tusK – 10 Greatest H<strong>it</strong>s!<br />
• WHOLE VOYALD, THE – In Repose (EP)<br />
• WILSON, TONY (SEXTET) – The People Look Like Flowers At Last<br />
• WALTER, WEASEL/ EDWARDS, MARC – Mysteries Beneath the Planet<br />
• WOZZECK – Act I<br />
• YAMAMOTO, ERI – Dulogue<br />
• YZIMALLOO – Unpop<br />
Historical/ Re-issues<br />
• BOYKINS, RONNIE – The Will Come, Is Now<br />
• BRADFORD, BOBBY – W<strong>it</strong>h John Stevens & The Spontaneous Music<br />
Ensemble<br />
• LANCASTER, BYARD – Personal Testimony: Then & Now<br />
• THE REVOLUTIONARY ENSEMBLE – Vietnam<br />
• TYLER, CHARLES – Charles Tyler Ensemble<br />
Reviewers: David Grundy, Ian Thumwood, Daniel Larwood, Sandy Kindness
CD REVIEWS<br />
AIDA SEVERO – AIDA SEVERO<br />
Label: Slam<br />
Release Date: 2008<br />
Tracklist: Hunter Gunter; Williams/Egan; Doce Ocho; Somervell/Somervell/Sarikis;<br />
Unt<strong>it</strong>led; Williams/Somervell/Sarikis; For Bruno S<br />
Personnel: Chris Williams: alto sax; Joe Egan: trumpet; Philip Somervell: piano; Colin<br />
Somervell: double bass; Vasilis Sarikis: drums<br />
‘Aida Severo’ alternates ensemble material built around pianist<br />
Philip Somervell’s jazz-flavoured compos<strong>it</strong>ions w<strong>it</strong>h shorter free<br />
improvisations for smaller combinations of musicians w<strong>it</strong>hin the group.<br />
The Brotherhood-of-Breath-tinged melody of ‘Hunter Gunter’ evolves into
some raucous collective improvisation, spurred by Chris Williams’ alto<br />
sax, and climaxing about four minutes in w<strong>it</strong>h Joe Egan blowing fast,<br />
brash figures. From there the mood changes, Egan taking a solo which<br />
builds in burred tones over quiet, inquis<strong>it</strong>ive bass, Somervell’s piano<br />
rising in volume to usher in another climax and to spark a new section,<br />
possessing intens<strong>it</strong>y of a different kind, as piano and drums sk<strong>it</strong>ter<br />
around the woody thrum of a bass solo before roiling chords bring back<br />
the acclamations of the melody.<br />
Following this comes the first of the free improvisations, a duet<br />
between Williams and Egan, which finds them mostly working<br />
complementary lines, ranging into faster flights but staying mostly in the<br />
fairly subdued mood w<strong>it</strong>h which they end. ‘Doce Ocho’ is another fine<br />
compos<strong>it</strong>ion by Somervell, alternating a delicious, almost classicallyflavoured<br />
moto perpetuo piano figure w<strong>it</strong>h a unison theme whose<br />
rhythmic and harmonic flavour seems fairly typical of much modern<br />
Br<strong>it</strong>ish jazz (think Guy Barker, Gerard Presencer, and the like).<br />
Saxophone multiphonics and sliding bowed bass in<strong>it</strong>iate a creakily<br />
mysterious feel for an in<strong>it</strong>ially drumless group improvisation; when the<br />
drums do enter, Somervell’s piano becomes more sk<strong>it</strong>tish, though there<br />
is still plenty of space left during another solo by Egan, whose gruff, midrange<br />
tone seems to owe something to Bill Dixon. A piano solo sw<strong>it</strong>ches<br />
between jazz rhythms and rolling, quick-fire repet<strong>it</strong>ions, ending on a<br />
series of repeated chords. The long, dying reverberations of the sustain<br />
pedal cue in a repeat of the composed material.<br />
A free improvisation for the ‘rhythm section’ finds Somervell in<br />
discursive mood, staying w<strong>it</strong>hin the lower to mid range of the keyboard,<br />
his brother plucking a steady but ambiguous course underneath, Sarikis<br />
contributing slowly emerging cymbal strokes and light taps which rise<br />
and fall along complementary melodic axes.<br />
The next compos<strong>it</strong>ion is ‘Unt<strong>it</strong>led’, consisting of a song-like but<br />
slightly tricksy melody stated by bright, optimistic saxophone and<br />
trumpet over the darker hues of a unison piano and bass vamp. In terms<br />
of colour and harmony, this comees across rather like Miles Davis’ 1960s<br />
Quintet w<strong>it</strong>h Herbie Hancock: at one point, Somervell plays what sounds<br />
like a direct Hancock quote, and Egan’s trumpet, though venturing down<br />
into some lower-register growls, is much more w<strong>it</strong>hin trad<strong>it</strong>ional jazz<br />
parameters here than elsewhere on the disc. It’s pretty and expertly<br />
executed – there can’t really be any complaints w<strong>it</strong>h that. The final<br />
improvised piece is also the shortest, and provides an immediate<br />
contrast: frantic altissimo saxophone, drums and piano going for <strong>it</strong> full<br />
tilt, w<strong>it</strong>h a nicely controlled conclusion keeping things concise.
Though <strong>it</strong> might not be immediately clear from the scratchy<br />
opening, ‘For Bruno S’ is the disc’s ballad, and I assume <strong>it</strong>’s dedicated to<br />
the actor who starred in Werner Herzog’s ‘The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser’<br />
and ‘Stroszek.’ Somervell’s melody is again a fine one, the man himself<br />
laying down some lovely chord progressions, the thing unfolding in a<br />
wistfully musing atmosphere, combining a certain aspect of melancholy<br />
w<strong>it</strong>h a more optimistic sense of beauty and contentment. The freer<br />
aspects, heard particularly in Egan’s trumpet playing, build on and move<br />
beyond this mood w<strong>it</strong>hout destroying <strong>it</strong>: passion w<strong>it</strong>hin the bounds of an<br />
adaptable but clear structural framework. It’s a lovely way w<strong>it</strong>h which to<br />
end what is, throughout, a very pleasurable listen. (David Grundy)<br />
CORY ALLEN – THE FOURTH WAY<br />
Label: Quiet Design<br />
Release Date: 2008<br />
Tracklist: Exedra; Telepathic Solve; Chordata Analysis; In Search of Miracul; All Suns;<br />
Chordata Analysis [Animal Aggreggation]; We Have Lots of Time<br />
Personnel: Cory Allen: Moog, Fender Rhodes<br />
‘The Fourth Way’ is ostensibly an album of beautiful, blissful drone<br />
material, but <strong>it</strong> contains some surprisingly harsh textures from the getgo,<br />
as the blistering clouds of static which open ‘Exedra’ refuse to give<br />
way to the choir-like chords which swell underneath. This doesn’t feel<br />
like a ‘battle’ though, which is particularly nice to hear, given the way<br />
that often supposedly ‘avant-garde’ artists end up reinforcing the old<br />
melody vs noise dichotomy by contrasting pretty sounds w<strong>it</strong>h harsher<br />
ones to convey some sense of ‘beauty under assault’, rather than<br />
attempting to break down barriers between what is accepted and not<br />
accepted as ‘beautiful’. In other words, their interest is in a rather oldfashioned<br />
kind of theatrics, rather than a more subtle textural approach.<br />
Of course, <strong>it</strong>’s true, on a certain level, that drones and chords of a certain<br />
type are more ‘pleasant’ on the ear than the harsh buzzings and<br />
cracklings w<strong>it</strong>h which they are ‘assaulted’; but, for me, Allen does more<br />
than simply contrast two sets of sounds. He realizes that to package off<br />
two aspects of experience and then to artificially p<strong>it</strong> them against one<br />
another is in some sense false, for the state of wonder is one of terror as<br />
well as blissful contemplation; states of mind, emotion and body are<br />
always combined in ways more complex than are simple dualistic<br />
categorisations allow. The effect of listening to a track like ‘Telepathic<br />
Solve,’ then, is like the effect of looking at the earth from space, of staring<br />
into the void-like distances beyond the stars, of watching shadows drift<br />
across the moon; a sense of a time that seems (whatever the real<strong>it</strong>y)<br />
immeasurably slower than our own, where durations such as that of the<br />
human life hold very l<strong>it</strong>tle meaning. It’s cold and frightening, lacking the<br />
touch of heat and fervour that makes us think our humble l<strong>it</strong>tle lives<br />
mean something, but <strong>it</strong> also awakens a longing w<strong>it</strong>hin us which takes us
out of our box, our street, into a consideration of a kind of consciousness<br />
which one might call cosmic. There’s something soothing about this: a<br />
giving over of oneself to mystery –not in the sense that one has to<br />
abandon a cr<strong>it</strong>ical, questioning sense, to fall into any traps of false fa<strong>it</strong>h<br />
or hope or trust – not in the sense that one is bludgeoned, but ushered,<br />
willingly, into quietude and a kind of necessary state of acceptance. (DG)<br />
DARCY JAMES ARGUE’S SECRET SOCIETY – INFERNAL MACHINES<br />
Label: New Amsterdam Records<br />
Release Date: 2009<br />
Tracklist: Phobos; Zeno; Trans<strong>it</strong>; Redeye; Jacobin Club; Habeas Corpus (for Maher<br />
Arar); Obsidian Flow<br />
Personnel: Erica Von Kleist, Rob Wilkerson: flute, alto flute, soprano & alto saxophones;<br />
Sam Sadigursky: clarinet, soprano & tenor saxophones; Mark Small: clarinet,<br />
bass clarinet, tenor saxophone; Josh Sinton: clarinet, bass clarinet, bar<strong>it</strong>one saxophone;<br />
Seneca Black: lead trumpet; Ingrid Jensen, Laurie Frink, Nadje Noordhuis, Tom<br />
Goehring: trumpet, fluegelhorn; Ryan Keberle, Mike Fahie, James Hirschfeld: trombone;<br />
Jennifer Wharton: bass trombone; Sebastian Noelle: acoustic & electric gu<strong>it</strong>ars; Mike
Holoboer: piano & electric piano; Matt Clohesy: contrabass & electric bass; Jon Wikan:<br />
drum set, cajon, pandeiro, & misc. percussion<br />
This debut CD has been much vaunted on a particular jazz webs<strong>it</strong>e<br />
and <strong>it</strong> is fair to say that this big band is drawing audiences from beyond<br />
jazz. Impressive for a self-produced record, the appearance of Canadian<br />
composer Argue on disc represents a triumvirate of former Bob Brookmeyer<br />
students now finding themselves at the forefront of big band arranging,<br />
w<strong>it</strong>h Maria Schneider and John Hollenbeck already having established<br />
their reputations. In some respects this band appears to s<strong>it</strong> in<br />
between the styles of his two colleagues, offering a compromise between<br />
the kind of themes of which Schneider is so fond (“Zeno”, for example)<br />
and the punchy approach of Hollenbeck that looks beyond jazz for inspiration.<br />
Indeed, this band even shares some of the same personnel w<strong>it</strong>h<br />
these other bands. More closely, the band puts a nod in the direction of<br />
some of Gil Evans’ 1970s work, albe<strong>it</strong> w<strong>it</strong>hout the older man’s immediate<br />
impact. As this record shows, orchestral jazz wr<strong>it</strong>ing has now become increasingly<br />
complex since the days of Evans’ more minimal scores.<br />
Uncompromisingly contemporary in many respects and clearly a<br />
product of the composer’s generation, the dominant solo voice being the<br />
rock-edged solo gu<strong>it</strong>ar of Sebastian Noelle, the music works best when<br />
the ensemble is playing full throttle. There are other soloists who are given<br />
chance to shine, such as trumpeter Ingrid Jensen and trombonist<br />
Ryan Keberle, but this is a record where the band <strong>it</strong>self is very much the<br />
star and the improvisation is a tad anonymous. On tracks like “Trans<strong>it</strong>”<br />
you do sense the exc<strong>it</strong>ement built up in the head being dissipated w<strong>it</strong>hin<br />
the first couple of bars of the trumpet solo, and you do wonder what a<br />
sprinkling of more established improvisers could have done for this music.<br />
Most of the names listed in the personnel are totally unknown to me.<br />
Argue’s approach eschews the trad<strong>it</strong>ional notions of Big Band wr<strong>it</strong>ing<br />
w<strong>it</strong>h <strong>it</strong>s combination of woodwinds, punchy brass, Fender Rhodes and a<br />
rhythm section that embraces rock and minimalism. Clearly, here is an<br />
original voice making <strong>it</strong>self known and <strong>it</strong> is fair to say that the superior<br />
wr<strong>it</strong>ing does dominate.<br />
As exc<strong>it</strong>ing as this record is, there are a few reservations. Much of<br />
the material is very similar and only “Trans<strong>it</strong>” seems to pick up the<br />
tempo from the slow /medium compos<strong>it</strong>ions that dominate this disc.<br />
“Trans<strong>it</strong>” represents one of the stand-out tracks and is followed by “Redeye”<br />
which starts promisingly w<strong>it</strong>h the mixture of acoustic and electric<br />
gu<strong>it</strong>ar before developing into a piece convincingly wr<strong>it</strong>ten to describe the<br />
state of tiredness at which you feel you are floating. Coupled w<strong>it</strong>h the<br />
similarly slow-moving “Habeas Corpus”, having reached this point in the<br />
record you begin to wish for a greater range of material and a b<strong>it</strong> more<br />
variety.
The other concern is the employment of an electronic percussion<br />
instrument to drive the band and whilst this certainly grabs your attention<br />
of the opening track “Phobos” w<strong>it</strong>h <strong>it</strong>s gently throbbing gu<strong>it</strong>ar riff<br />
(think of the effect of Gil Evans’ “Lunar Eclipse” on the album “Priestess”<br />
and you will get the impression) , Argue later employs this instrument<br />
throughout “Jacobin Club” w<strong>it</strong>h the consequence that you desperately<br />
want to hear a proper drum k<strong>it</strong> to lift this chart beyond the almost mechanical<br />
crawl.<br />
On the plus side, the album ends very strongly w<strong>it</strong>h “Obsidian<br />
Flow” where the melody is picked out by an alto saxophone underpinned<br />
by a slightly menacing riff which gradually builds up in exc<strong>it</strong>ement.<br />
Stopping mid-way through to change tack, the remainder of the chart<br />
features the alto soloing over another vamp until developing into some<br />
impressive orchestral wr<strong>it</strong>ing over a bass pedal. The alto soloist returns<br />
once more over the riff which grows progressively louder and ferocious<br />
providing a f<strong>it</strong>ting climax to this record.<br />
In conclusion, this is a fascinating record and demonstrative of<br />
just how exc<strong>it</strong>ing the potential is for modern big band wr<strong>it</strong>ing w<strong>it</strong>h arrangers<br />
fully conversant w<strong>it</strong>h contemporary Classical techniques and<br />
fully capable of creating their own musical ident<strong>it</strong>y. A more varied programme<br />
would have made this one of the most interesting releases of the<br />
year but, all the same, Darcy James Argue remains a name to watch for<br />
those interested in this field of jazz. (Ian Thumwood)<br />
BARNACLED – CHARLES
Label: ESP Disk<br />
Release Date: November 2008<br />
Tracklist: Rattles; Losing Weight Through Prayer; Jennifer Plastics; Three Rapid Fire<br />
Shell Divisions; Language Barrier; Polyurethane; Simulacrum<br />
Personnel: Frank Difficult: electronics/keyboard; Michael Jeffries: bass/bar<strong>it</strong>one<br />
saxophone/modified Speak & Spell; Jason McGill: alto<br />
saxophone/percussion/shortwave radio; Matt McLaren: drums/ percussion; Alec K.<br />
Redfearn: accordion; Ann Schattle: horn in F; Erica Schattle: bassoon<br />
‘Charles’, an album named for the friendly faced goat which adorns<br />
<strong>it</strong>s cover, finds Providence, Rhode Island septet Barnacled charting the<br />
oft-perilous waters of ‘progressive’ rock. Barnacled’s brand of prog is<br />
not, however, that of those now infamous 1970s dinosaurs whose<br />
pretentious pseudo-classical excursions made them, ironically enough,<br />
icons of musical regress. Instead the group draw on the more whimsical<br />
style associated w<strong>it</strong>h bands of the so-called ‘Canterbury’ scene, filtering<br />
this sensibil<strong>it</strong>y through members’ interests in such varied musical<br />
terrain as punk, metal, and free jazz.<br />
Barnacled’s oddball sound is quickly established on opening track<br />
‘T<strong>it</strong>le’, which begins w<strong>it</strong>h an insistent chromatic line from the band’s<br />
horn section (comprising bassoon, horn in F, alto and bar<strong>it</strong>one sax)<br />
which suggests a harder-edged Soft Machine circa ‘Third’. Repeated<br />
variations on the opening riff eventually give way to a spacey, ambient<br />
drone over which the saxes wrangle in free jazz fashion, before the main<br />
riff returns once again. After a solo spot for drums and accordion the riff<br />
re-emerges and drives the piece to <strong>it</strong>s conclusion, backed by thunderous<br />
percussion. The track’s overall reliance on repeated riffs and a<br />
hammering backbeat suggests that, desp<strong>it</strong>e the occasional stylistic<br />
reference to the free jazz of ESP forebears like Albert Ayler and Sun Ra,<br />
Barnacled are at heart a ‘rock’ band – albe<strong>it</strong> an unusual one (there are<br />
no gu<strong>it</strong>ars, for starters).<br />
Whilst ‘T<strong>it</strong>le’ hints at the quick-fire barrage of hardcore punk and<br />
extreme metal, second track ‘Rattles’ is more openly indebted to such<br />
music, w<strong>it</strong>h <strong>it</strong>s grinding, fuzzy bass-line and blasting drums – supplant<br />
the minor-key horn parts for tremolo-picked gu<strong>it</strong>ars and <strong>it</strong> could almost<br />
be black metal at certain points. The band eases up on the pace on<br />
‘Losing Weight Through Prayer’, but retains a sense of underlying<br />
menace w<strong>it</strong>h the rhythm section’s uneasy groove, on top of which<br />
accordion and horns explore Eastern-tinged modal ideas: imagine Gong,<br />
but w<strong>it</strong>h the teapots and gnomes replaced by the monstrous beings of H.<br />
P. Lovecraft (as the liner notes astutely remind us, Lovecraft was also a<br />
native of Providence). It is these opening three tracks that best exemplify<br />
Barnacled’s darker, edgier take on the jazzy psych-rock of the<br />
Canterbury bands – whilst the humour and good-natured whimsical<strong>it</strong>y<br />
remains, a clear affin<strong>it</strong>y for the more angular, jarring qual<strong>it</strong>ies of other<br />
genres keeps any latent hippy tendencies safely in check.
Elsewhere on ‘Charles’ the band venture into more overtly<br />
experimental terr<strong>it</strong>ory. ‘Jennifer Plastics’ for instance, is a noise piece<br />
employing electronics and radio; ‘Polyurethane’, meanwhile, alternates<br />
between a melodic horn refrain and whispered free improvisation in<br />
music that recalls the Spontaneous Music Ensemble. Rather perversely,<br />
these forays into ‘avant-garde’ music don’t offer a great deal that is new<br />
or terribly exc<strong>it</strong>ing – certainly nothing to compete w<strong>it</strong>h the pioneers of<br />
such approaches. Other tracks, notably ‘Three Rapid Fire Shell<br />
Divisions’, find the band returning to repeated gestures, w<strong>it</strong>h throbbing<br />
rhythms redolent of minimalism – again, not something I find<br />
particularly thrilling, although Barnacled bring a (un)healthy sense of<br />
warped-ness to such material, making <strong>it</strong> a far cry from the sterile<br />
blandness of some minimalist fare.<br />
Barnacled’s wilfully eclectic, polymorphous sound can prove<br />
enervating at times, and the unabashed incorporation of such diverse<br />
influences sometimes threatens to turn the music into a stylistic<br />
mishmash (perhaps this was intentional; postmodernism has, after all,<br />
made pastiche an acceptable aesthetic approach – according to some).<br />
Yet, even when they don’t qu<strong>it</strong>e get <strong>it</strong> right, Barnacled bring a sense of<br />
weirdness and daring to their music that many contemporary bands<br />
working w<strong>it</strong>hin the broad idiom of rock-derived music lack, and for this<br />
they deserve cred<strong>it</strong>. (Daniel Larwood)<br />
MICHEL F. CÔTÉ/ A_DONTIGNY – LA NOTTE FA<br />
A_Dontigny Michel F. Côté
Label: &records<br />
Release Date: 2008<br />
Tracklist: R<strong>it</strong>mi di oggetti; Unlisted Card Number; Paxil Origami Club; Bounce Dat<br />
ARN; Lube Liqueur; Jumping Off Minoru Yamasaki’s Building; Visiones Noctunæ;<br />
target="blank_"; Naines qui gesticulent; The Book Burner<br />
Personnel: Michel F Côté: drums, percussion, micros, tapes, electronics; A_Dontigny:<br />
cut-ups, drum machines, dsp; Bernard Falaise: gu<strong>it</strong>ar on 4 & 9, keyboards on 9;<br />
Alexandre St-Onge: bass and sounds on 4 & 9; Alexander Macsween: add<strong>it</strong>ional drums<br />
on 1; Jean René: viola on 3<br />
J<strong>it</strong>tery, cut-up music in which a barrage of samples – fragments of<br />
barely-recognisable speech, conventional instruments running a gauntlet<br />
of electronic distortion, snippets of grooves and beats that have been<br />
pulled and stretched and chopped to pieces – collide and (less frequently)<br />
cohere into a soundscape that can strike one at different moments as<br />
e<strong>it</strong>her fun, in a kind of crazy, sped-up way, or nightmarish, for pretty<br />
much the same reason. The starting point here would seem to be the<br />
more experimental moments of Autechre or Aphex Twin, w<strong>it</strong>h the<br />
tendency to repet<strong>it</strong>ive, danceable beats knocked to one side to leave<br />
something which has a defin<strong>it</strong>e physical pull to <strong>it</strong>, but which isn’t going<br />
to make you dance to any sort of regular rhythm– rather, your stop-start<br />
spasms will give you away as a madman dancing to the disrespectful<br />
voices in your head. There’s no real question of ‘soloing’ here, or even of<br />
distinguishing between the various musicians, given the way that<br />
everything is mashed-up through electronics: the occasional beats which<br />
can be heard to come from a conventional drum-k<strong>it</strong> are soon overlaid<br />
w<strong>it</strong>h all manner of computerised sputters and run-away loops, and Jean<br />
René’s viola, which might have pulled things in a more ambient direction<br />
(à la Coil’s ‘Moon’s Milk’) is kept firmly to the bottom of the mix on his<br />
one contribution to the album. It’s rather like listening to a radio station<br />
w<strong>it</strong>h really fucked-up reception for an hour, the few moments of resp<strong>it</strong>e<br />
being provided through samples of Maurice Ravel’s ‘Ma Mere L’Oye’ and a<br />
Don Cherry trumpet piece that appear, are toyed w<strong>it</strong>h, mangled out of<br />
recogn<strong>it</strong>ion, and then discarded for the next set of electronic<br />
whirligigging. Another comparison might be the sample-overload of early<br />
Public Enemy w<strong>it</strong>hout the (relatively) stabilising element of Chuck D and<br />
Flavor Flav’s vocals, which are at least determinedly about something: no<br />
such reference points here. One is left to conclude, then, that <strong>it</strong>’s best to<br />
avoid looking for comparisons, for generic references, as they’re pretty<br />
much useless in describing music that’s so determinedly askew, so<br />
schizophrenically active, so resistant to easy digestion and to<br />
standardised comprehension as this; music as chemical substance,<br />
hurtling through the blood-stream, sparking all sorts of strange,<br />
shuddering journeys through the brain. (DG)
BILL DIXON – TAPESTRIES FOR SMALL ORCHESTRA<br />
Label: Firehouse 12<br />
Release Date: November 2009<br />
Tracklist: (Disc One) Motorcycle ’66: Reflections & Ruminations; Slivers: Sand Dance<br />
for Sophia; Phrygian II; Adagio: Slow Mauve Scribblings; (Disc Two) Allusions I;<br />
Tapestries; Durations of Permanence; Innocenenza<br />
Personnel: Bill Dixon: trumpet, electronics; Taylor Ho Bynum: cornet, flugelhorn, bass<br />
trumpet, piccolo trumpet; Graham Haynes: cornet, flugelhorn, electronics; Stephen<br />
Haynes: trumpet, cornet, flugelhorn; Rob Mazurek: cornet, electronics; Michel Conte:<br />
contrabass clarinet, bass clarinet; Glynis Loman: cello; Ken Filiano: bass, electronics;<br />
Warren Sm<strong>it</strong>h: vibes; marimba, drums, tympani, gongs.<br />
Add<strong>it</strong>ional Information: The physical release of the album (as opposed to MP3<br />
versions), comes w<strong>it</strong>h a DVD documentary covering the recording sessions, ent<strong>it</strong>led<br />
‘Going to the Center’.
Bill Dixon’s most recent recordings have found him working in<br />
large ensemble settings, rather than the duo and solo format which<br />
makes up much of his recorded output, and the t<strong>it</strong>le of his latest release<br />
announces that the sound will once more have an orchestral dimension.<br />
As Stephen Haynes notes in his online journal/blog covering the<br />
recording sessions for this project, 1 one of the challenges involved was<br />
providing enough distinction in the sound mix between five<br />
trumpeters/cornet players w<strong>it</strong>h similarly dark sounds. But Dixon does,<br />
after all, favour a dark palette, as amply demonstrated by his last album,<br />
‘17 Musicians In Search of a Sound: Darfur’, where the slightly larger<br />
ensemble produced slowly emerging chord-clouds and slowly shifting<br />
unison passages in which the ensemble mesh was produced by<br />
individual instruments in near, but not qu<strong>it</strong>e, total alignment. The effect<br />
is a kind of blurring, produced by a very careful manipulation of<br />
individual detail; a more horizontal than vertical approach, w<strong>it</strong>h solos<br />
emerging as parts of the texture – like a colour highlighted in a particular<br />
portion of a canvas – rather than as monologues supported by an<br />
ensemble background. This has always been the case w<strong>it</strong>h Dixon’s own<br />
playing, particularly given his use of electronics, and the fact that the<br />
other trumpeters also deploy electronics, in some cases seeming to mimic<br />
his approach – muted growls, breathy whispers, repeated mid-register<br />
notes, high-p<strong>it</strong>ched flurries cascading into silence – adds to the<br />
collaborative feel. That’s not to say that there aren’t solo spots, though –<br />
for instance, ‘Motorcycle ‘66’ starts w<strong>it</strong>h melodic material for<br />
unaccompanied bass which succeeds in forcing an in<strong>it</strong>ial concentration,<br />
in ushering the listener in to a music which needs to be heard w<strong>it</strong>h open<br />
ears. In any case, ne<strong>it</strong>her ensemble nor solo passages contain a wasted<br />
note; as Dixon puts <strong>it</strong>: “Listen to the space in the room. If you can't do<br />
something more beautiful than that, shut the fuck up.” The result tends<br />
to a kind of substantial minimalism – very slow, seeming to lack any<br />
overtly linear development, predominantly atmospheric, almost trancelike.<br />
And yet even this apparent lack of activ<strong>it</strong>y – most pronounced on<br />
the sustained hush of ‘Adagio: Slow Mauve Scribblings’ – reveals <strong>it</strong>self<br />
upon closer inspection to consist of complex structural balances and<br />
connections. Low, slowly-shifting drones, shimmering vibraphone,<br />
occasional electronic tweaks, overlapping melodic lines, repeated upward<br />
flurries all combine to create a sound field that is unique in modern<br />
music. Inexorable yet fragile, ‘Tapestries for Small Orchestra’ is slowmoving,<br />
med<strong>it</strong>ative, and deeply affecting. (DG)<br />
1 http://stephenhaynes.blogspot.com/2008_07_01_archive.html
MARC EDWARDS/ WEASEL WALTER GROUP – MYSTERIES<br />
BENEATH THE PLANET<br />
Label: ugEXPLODE<br />
Release Date: 2009<br />
Tracklist: A World W<strong>it</strong>hout Sun; Luminous Predator; Book of the Dead; The Coral Reef<br />
Personnel: (Tracks 1 & 3) Marc Edwards: drums (right channel); Weasel Walter: drums<br />
(left channel); Tom Blancarte: bass; Peter Evans: trumpet, melodica; Darius Jones: alto<br />
saxophone; Paul Flaherty: tenor saxophone; (Tracks 2 & 4) Marc Edwards: drums (right<br />
channel); Weasel Walter: drums (left channel); Andre Barker: drums; Ras Moshe: tenor<br />
saxophone, flute, etc; Mario Rechtern: sopranino, alto & bar<strong>it</strong>one saxophones, etc<br />
What you get when you match up two drummers of such explosive<br />
power as Weasel Walter and Marc Edwards is a music that’s volatile and<br />
loud, and the two large ensembles they work w<strong>it</strong>h on these four tracks<br />
unleash a kaleidoscope of textures that fly past like super-fast flashes of<br />
light. Opener ‘A World w<strong>it</strong>hout Sun’ is relatively brief. Walter and<br />
Edwards begin w<strong>it</strong>h drum textures before Tom Blancarte’s sawing,<br />
groaning-ship bass is joined by the multiphonic growls of the twin<br />
saxophones. As the full band rises from this textured opening to fullblast<br />
collectivism, Darius Jones’ alto and Peter Evans’ trumpet take on<br />
bouncy jazz inflections while Paul Flaherty unleashes throaty rasps on<br />
tenor. Blancarte’s bass is felt as an underlying vibration as much as <strong>it</strong> is<br />
heard playing bass-lines, while Walter and Edwards rise in alternating<br />
crests so that the texture is always filled w<strong>it</strong>h metallic pings, rumbles<br />
and rolls. The saxophones mesh together in thick, overblown impasto,<br />
and everyone drops out until the last sound heard is the click of finger<br />
on saxophone.<br />
‘Luminous Predator’ has, at first, an almost Moroccan vibe, due to<br />
the abrasive, nasal, Jajouka-flavoured piping of Mario Rechtern on<br />
sopranino. Playing super-quick lines, tossing off shrieking flurries and<br />
melodic repet<strong>it</strong>ions, he takes a brief solo under which the triple-drum<br />
backing of Walter, Edwards and Andrew Barker make up for the absence<br />
of a bass w<strong>it</strong>h a pulsating rhythm field that almost simulates an African<br />
drum choir in <strong>it</strong>s self-generating propulsion. Once this launches into<br />
motion, <strong>it</strong>s progress is assured, lurching and leaping under the shrill<br />
wails and scattergun blasts of Rechtern and Ras Moshe. As the music<br />
spirals higher and higher, the t<strong>it</strong>le seems entirely appropriate: music that<br />
is predatory in <strong>it</strong>s speed and energy, grindingly intense in <strong>it</strong>s timbral<br />
qual<strong>it</strong>y, but also somehow luminous and full of clar<strong>it</strong>y in the total<br />
comm<strong>it</strong>ment, the sheer determination of <strong>it</strong>s wailing, chattering<br />
possession.<br />
While ne<strong>it</strong>her band exactly goes easy on the listener, the Evans/<br />
Jones/ Flaherty/Blancarte line-up is in general slightly more concerned<br />
w<strong>it</strong>h the intertwining of melodic lines – or at least, the contrast of<br />
melodic line w<strong>it</strong>h more purely textural smears. This is in large part due
to the brassy clarion of Evans’ trumpet in the ensemble passages, though<br />
when he actually solos on ‘Book of the Dead’ (seemingly w<strong>it</strong>h the aid of<br />
electronics) his harsh, grinding woofs, coupled w<strong>it</strong>h unnerving shouts<br />
and screams, lead to perhaps the shrillest passage on the entire record:<br />
the aural equivalent of wh<strong>it</strong>e heat. Saxophones link in an unstable, seesawing<br />
free jazz drone over arco bass and the circular motion of<br />
pounding drums: the contrast of repet<strong>it</strong>ion and ever-changing<br />
improvisation is nightmarish, edge-of-the-seat stuff, Evans’ brief<br />
declaration of what sounds like a ballad melody a brief throwaway,<br />
rather than signaling a change of direction. Indeed, things only get more<br />
intense as the musicians start exchanging rough screams, the half-heard<br />
voices of monstrous forces mockingly mimicking the vocalised<br />
trajectories of the saxophones. If the Rechtern/Mose/Barker group is<br />
ecstatic in a joyful sense, the group we hear on ‘Book of the Dead’ goes to<br />
some fearful places – exhilarating but terrifying, a modern sublime.<br />
Ras Moshe’s flute imparts final track ‘The Coral Reef’ w<strong>it</strong>h a<br />
dancing delicacy: swirling loops and vocalisations, hints of the blues,<br />
mysterious exoticisms. Bagpipe drone, steadiness of looping melody,<br />
bird-flight flute. It’s a nice change from the saxophone-dominated<br />
orthodoxy of free jazz, takes things further on down the route Coltrane<br />
and Sanders’ were going before Coltrane died (‘To Be’ from ‘Expression’):<br />
music that borrows from other continents w<strong>it</strong>hout losing <strong>it</strong>s pulsating<br />
original force, which gains rather than loses from the association.<br />
Rhythmic car-horn honk on bar<strong>it</strong>one and tenor, shrill, to-the-heavens<br />
piping, drumming that undulates and flows rather than dictating toosimple<br />
directions through the impos<strong>it</strong>ion of clichéd beats. It all ends<br />
suddenly (an ed<strong>it</strong>? Maybe there wasn’t enough space for the whole piece<br />
one CD). And the fact that one wants the CD to continue – wants more of<br />
the same, not less – indicates the power of this record, which is both one<br />
of the most varied and one of the most exc<strong>it</strong>ingly forceful free jazz albums<br />
I’ve heard in recent years. (DG)<br />
JOEL FUTTERMAN – TRANSITION ONE: SOLO PIANO<br />
Label: Self-released CD-R<br />
Release Date: September 2009<br />
Tracklist: Part One; Part Two; Part Three<br />
Personnel: Joel Futterman: piano<br />
Add<strong>it</strong>ional Information: Recorded May 16, 2009.<br />
Available from www.joelfutterman.com<br />
The information that comes w<strong>it</strong>h the CD-R informs us that “each<br />
track is a complete uned<strong>it</strong>ed first-take w<strong>it</strong>h no overdubs, and is in the<br />
order in which <strong>it</strong> was recorded.” From the off, then, Futterman’s<br />
improvisational quick-thinking, honed by decades of practice and live<br />
experience, is in evidence, as he sprints the breadth of the keyboard’s
egister, his darts and dips from high to low notes often phrased w<strong>it</strong>h a<br />
marked jazz twist. The music at this early stage is characterised by the<br />
moving together and away of the two hands as independent un<strong>it</strong>s: for<br />
instance, the left hand will spin out a rhythm, however broken up and<br />
fractured by ‘extra’ notes (notes, that is, that do not qu<strong>it</strong>e conform to the<br />
pattern into which they are being slotted), while the right will fly w<strong>it</strong>h an<br />
apparently less controlled, more exc<strong>it</strong>edly manic relish over a myriad of<br />
notes, unleashing a flurry of possibil<strong>it</strong>ies which unfurl at such speed that<br />
they cannot qu<strong>it</strong>e be taken in. Combine these two approaches and you<br />
have a great level of information dens<strong>it</strong>y, w<strong>it</strong>h two or even three<br />
directions being explored at once, and at great speed. Such playing must<br />
exhausting to keep up at full stretch for extended periods (though<br />
Futterman is well capable of doing so), and might perhaps lead to a kind<br />
of shut-down in the listener’s mind – faced w<strong>it</strong>h such a sheer mass of<br />
sound, the prospect of attempting to organise <strong>it</strong> as <strong>it</strong> happens will prove<br />
too much, and the detail will become eradicated; an impression of<br />
something going on which shut out precisely what in a kind of<br />
generalised inattention. Of course, a similar, but more rewarding<br />
process, might be the paying of such close attention that a kind of<br />
trance-like state is reached: a total involvement w<strong>it</strong>h energy and rhythm,<br />
a perception of sound as pattern and movement, as an arrangement in<br />
space which involves and demands bodily participation.<br />
On this occasion, though, Futterman doesn’t seek to total<br />
overwhelm in such a manner, and he’s careful to vary the dynamics and<br />
timings of his attacks. Much of this is down to pedalling – a quick press<br />
of the sustain pedal adds a different temporal and textural dimension to<br />
a traversal of the keyboard, even if this lasts only for a moment – but<br />
also to the abil<strong>it</strong>y to put on the brakes, to suddenly stop mid-flight and<br />
leave the silence hanging, e<strong>it</strong>her as a gap to be filled by more energetics,<br />
or as the beginning of a quieter, more tonal approach.<br />
These tonal sections which gradually creep in tend to be primarily<br />
in the jazz idiom, though one rolling mid-register section almost suggests<br />
the country-raga of Koln Concert era Ke<strong>it</strong>h Jarrett (but w<strong>it</strong>hout the<br />
exaggerated melodicism). Yet the use of such material is by no means a<br />
regression to ‘easier’ music, a concession to the listener overwhelmed by<br />
speed, volume and dissonance. Firstly, the way that Futterman uses <strong>it</strong>,<br />
the grav<strong>it</strong>as and delicacy w<strong>it</strong>h which he plays <strong>it</strong>, confers on <strong>it</strong> the<br />
leg<strong>it</strong>imacy of emotional necess<strong>it</strong>y (i.e. in no way is <strong>it</strong>s use parodic, nor<br />
does the thought of this even arise when one hears <strong>it</strong> as part of the whole<br />
performance). In fact, the music’s ‘in-the-momentness’ is actually<br />
enhanced by the frequent returns to such material, which has the feel of<br />
a pre-structured jazz compos<strong>it</strong>ion – even if, rather than elongated<br />
melodies or even quick refrains, what we have here are brief chordal
sketches and patterns which aren’t qu<strong>it</strong>e fully-fledged ‘compos<strong>it</strong>ions’ as<br />
such. Particularly as the piece progresses, Futterman comes back again<br />
and again to a series of meltingly lovely ‘ballad’ chordal progressions,<br />
and, though he ruminates over them w<strong>it</strong>h loving care and attention, the<br />
pauses extended for maximum dramatic and emotional effect w<strong>it</strong>h the<br />
timing and grace we might associate in other fields w<strong>it</strong>h an actor or a<br />
dancer, there is always the sense that any moment he will break away<br />
from them into more abrasive or exploratory registers. There is then a<br />
very real sense of fragil<strong>it</strong>y, of the maintenance of a delicate balance,<br />
which is testament to Futterman’s self-confidence and also to his abil<strong>it</strong>y<br />
to lay himself and the music on the line for the sake of discovery and for<br />
staying true to what must be created in that moment, the running of<br />
risks to gain what could not be gained any other way.<br />
Why ‘risk’? Well, for one thing, the contrast between the ‘beauty’ of<br />
jazz ballad chords and the ‘drama’ or ‘aggression’ of the ‘avant-garde’<br />
material might easily create a rather facile oppos<strong>it</strong>ional feel, and<br />
Futterman has therefore to be alert to every nuance of every note which<br />
he plays, to ensure that none are wasted, that he ne<strong>it</strong>her overstates nor<br />
understates. So well does he negotiate this problem, in fact, that the<br />
relationship between the two types of material becomes symbiotic, rather<br />
than contrasting: like breathing in and breathing out, the one required<br />
before the other can take place. Thus, the ballad material affects the<br />
more dissonant runs through the way <strong>it</strong>s rhythmic structure hangs over<br />
the music, in the form of a certain minute gradation in timing which I<br />
wouldn’t qu<strong>it</strong>e call hes<strong>it</strong>ancy or diminishment of boldness in attack.<br />
Rather, <strong>it</strong>’s a spl<strong>it</strong>-second difference which nonetheless slightly alters the<br />
entire feel of what’s been played. As one realizes that this chordal<br />
fragment just won’t go away, the structure of the whole piece seems<br />
transformed. If <strong>it</strong>’s become impossible at this stage for Futterman to play<br />
w<strong>it</strong>h the exuberance and unceasing rhythmic force of the opening, he<br />
also makes sure that he doesn’t simply revert to playing on jazz ballad<br />
chord changes for the next twenty minutes (something which he would<br />
be very easily capable of doing very beautifully, but which present no real<br />
challenge in the spir<strong>it</strong> explored by the piece of the whole).<br />
So, these two approaches do grow out of each other – the chords<br />
contain in themselves the possibil<strong>it</strong>y for lack of resolution, though they<br />
yearn so much for <strong>it</strong>, while the quick-paced runs can’t be sustained for<br />
ever (as a fact of the physical demands they place on the pianist –<br />
somewhere there has to be a pause, a trans<strong>it</strong>ion). And perhaps that<br />
explains the record’s t<strong>it</strong>le, as well: the constant trans<strong>it</strong>ion between these<br />
different types of playing, the weight accumulated by pauses and by<br />
changes of directions, by alternations and by alterations, by starting and<br />
stopping, pausing, slowing, accelerating, rising, falling. (DG)
GIGANTOMACHIA – THE NAKED FUTURE<br />
Label: ESP Disk<br />
Release Date: 2009<br />
Tracklist: We Binge on a Bloodthirsty God; We Boil the Raven's Skull into Gold; We<br />
Engage the Monstrous w<strong>it</strong>h Our Mirrors; We Fly Beneath and Above the Flux; We Sleep<br />
in a Rabb<strong>it</strong> Hole.<br />
We Binge On a Bloodthirsty God; We Boil the Raven’s Skull Into Gold<br />
Personnel: Arrington de Dionyso: bass clarinet, contralto clarinet; Thollem McDonas:<br />
piano; John Niekrasz: drums; Gregg Skloff: amplified upright bass<br />
Gigantomachia deliver free jazz (or free improvisation, what you<br />
will) w<strong>it</strong>h fantastically bad manners: <strong>it</strong> starts, <strong>it</strong> stops, <strong>it</strong> roars, <strong>it</strong> leaves<br />
inordinate long silences where <strong>it</strong> seems that the track must have come to<br />
an end, only for clarinetist de Dionysio to squeak things back into<br />
motion – an endlessly tense and teasing process which must play havoc<br />
w<strong>it</strong>h applause-ready club audiences, an extension of the kind of textural<br />
games Miles Davis played in his 1970s groups (in which he would cut<br />
out all but one member of the band w<strong>it</strong>h hand signals, so that the soloist<br />
was suddenly left totally out on their own), stretched even further than<br />
Miles himself dared. The amplified bass is played so hard that <strong>it</strong> sets off
everberations from the snare, which can be heard as a kind of<br />
involuntary rhythmic accompaniment; the piano playing is tremendously<br />
exhilarating when at <strong>it</strong>s most gleefully, wholly deranged, smashing<br />
clusters, smears of sound w<strong>it</strong>h no regard for subtlety in that moment,<br />
though also w<strong>it</strong>h an odd obsessive qual<strong>it</strong>y also shared by de Dionysio (for<br />
instance, playing a Latin hook for well over half of the third piece while<br />
the rest of the band dances free time around <strong>it</strong>).<br />
It all has a sound to <strong>it</strong> which is some way very different to a lot of<br />
other free jazz bands; entirely appropriate to the new vision of ESP, <strong>it</strong><br />
possesses all the rawness of their original 60s recordings, now the<br />
classics from which de Anysio and co. learn, rather than the boundarypushers<br />
of the moment, but takes things even further out from the<br />
realms of jazz (which does, however, rear <strong>it</strong>s head in a few piano phrases<br />
now and again, and in the occasional hints of a walking bass (which<br />
might just be aud<strong>it</strong>ory hallucinations after yet another stop-start<br />
assault)). Even the punk and rock musics which David Keenan mentions<br />
in his enthusiastic and wholly appropriate liner notes don’t seem qu<strong>it</strong>e<br />
relevant; for though this music is hard and raw and aggressive as hell, <strong>it</strong><br />
also has a sense of control and even of manipulation (perhaps down to de<br />
Dionysio’s role as ‘musical director’, in some way spontaneously shaping<br />
these collective improvisations as the band’s leader). In add<strong>it</strong>ion, you can<br />
rely on the band never to do the expected thing (when they do, as in the<br />
Latin vamp on the third piece, <strong>it</strong> becomes unexpected by dint of <strong>it</strong>s<br />
rar<strong>it</strong>y); this may in large part be due to the way drummer Niekrasz<br />
always looks to avoid the expected and tested paths there to tempt all<br />
percussionists (jazz time-keeping, punk rock emphatic mechanics, allover<br />
Sunny-Murray sound-waves).<br />
Special mention, too, must go to de Dionysio’s instrumental<br />
prowess; while most bass clarinettists working in this area of the music<br />
have carried on from where Eric Dolphy left off, propelling themselves<br />
into ever more raucous and athletic displays, de Dionysio’s playing on<br />
this disc is perhaps the most vigorous and elemental I’ve heard in qu<strong>it</strong>e a<br />
while, blaring over and egging on the collective fury of the band and,<br />
occasionally, engaging in breathy, tightrope-walk duos w<strong>it</strong>h Skloff’s arco<br />
bass that unsettle as much as they represent any sort of ‘calm’.<br />
This, then, is a genuinely fresh recording: music w<strong>it</strong>h real spir<strong>it</strong><br />
and b<strong>it</strong>e, wholly inspiring and inspired. (DG)
ROY HARGROVE BIG BAND – EMERGENCE<br />
Label: Emercy<br />
Release Date: 2009<br />
Tracklist: Velera; Ms. Garvey, Ms. Garvey; My Funny Valentine; Mambo for Roy; Requiem;<br />
September In the Rain;Every Time We Say Goodbye; La Puerta; Roy Allan;<br />
Tschpiso; Trust.<br />
Personnel: Roy Hargrove: leader, composer, arranger, trumpet, fluegelhorn, vocal;<br />
Frank Greene: trumpet and flugelhorn; Greg Gisbert, : trumpet and flugelhorn; Darren<br />
Barrett: trumpet and flugelhorn; Ambrose Akinmisure: trumpet and flugelhorn; Jason<br />
Jackson: trombone; Vincent Chandler: trombone; Saunders Sermons: trombone; Max<br />
Siegel: bass trombone, arranger; Bruce Williams: alto saxophone, flute; Justin Robinson:<br />
alto saxophone, flute; Norbert Stachel: tenor saxophone, flute; Ke<strong>it</strong>h Loftis: tenor<br />
saxophone, flute; Jason Marshall: bar<strong>it</strong>one saxophone, flute, reeds; Gerald Clayton: piano,<br />
arranger; Saul Rubin: gu<strong>it</strong>ar; Danton Boller: bass; Montez Coleman: drums;<br />
Roberta Gambarini: vocals.
This is the first recording by Roy Hargrove’s big band, which has<br />
been in existence since 1995. Over the years the trumpeter has produced<br />
an eclectic variety of records including hard bop, Latin, romantic strings<br />
and the pop-funk of RH Factor. This CD by his 19 piece big band is similarly<br />
no less wide ranging w<strong>it</strong>h the arrangements at times making the<br />
band sound like fellow trumpeter’s Tom Harrell’s orchestra on the opening<br />
“Velera” w<strong>it</strong>h others bring in mind such diverse groups as Charles<br />
Tolliver, Thad Jones / Mel Lewis (“Ms Garvey, Ms Garvey”) or even Dizzy<br />
Gillespie on the humorous rend<strong>it</strong>ion of “September in the rain.” There is<br />
even a nod to Chet Baker on “My funny valentine.” Most of the arrangements<br />
are, in fact, by Roy Hargrove w<strong>it</strong>h others such as Frank Lacey<br />
(who contributes the modal workout of “Requiem”) and up-and-coming<br />
pianist Gerald Clayton who is himself the son of arranger / bassist/ big<br />
band leader John.<br />
It is probably a reasonable assessment to say that this is an extremely<br />
mainstream offering and <strong>it</strong> is fair to say that there is much on<br />
this record to please those who have grown up w<strong>it</strong>h more orthodox bands<br />
such as Count Basie’s. Personally, I think that this is something very<br />
much in <strong>it</strong>s favour for, w<strong>it</strong>h the obvious exception of the ballads, most of<br />
these tracks swing like crazy. I particularly like “Mambo for Roy” which<br />
builds up a formidable head of Latin steam w<strong>it</strong>h some nice flute and piano<br />
before coming to a conclusion w<strong>it</strong>h a thundering cadenza from Gerald<br />
Clayton after which the band bursts in w<strong>it</strong>h a loud tutti and Hargrove<br />
unleashing a tumultuous break underpinned w<strong>it</strong>h odd punctuations<br />
from the drums. The piece then ends w<strong>it</strong>h a montouno and an ensemble<br />
riff – all told this is just about the most exc<strong>it</strong>ing couple of minutes of music<br />
I have heard put down on record all year. Every time I hear <strong>it</strong>, <strong>it</strong><br />
makes you want to punch the air in delight.<br />
“September in the rain” opens w<strong>it</strong>h Hargrove’s muted trumpet and<br />
sound very much like <strong>it</strong> was wr<strong>it</strong>ten in the 1950’s. The leader sings on<br />
this track after of good deal of your typical big band fair and the band respond<br />
in kind to Hargrove’s efforts in scat in the album’s most fun track.<br />
Dizzy would have approved. Although Hargrove may not be amongst the<br />
best of his fellow trumpeters in handling the vocals, a proper singer is<br />
fortunately on hand in the form of the wonderful Italian vocalist Roberta<br />
Gambarini who delivers an impressive “Every time we say goodbye”<br />
backed by Saul Rubin’s gentle chart that intriguingly mutates into ¾<br />
halfway through. This one track offers ample proof as to why some cr<strong>it</strong>ics<br />
in the States are considering her to be even more technically accomplished<br />
than Ella F<strong>it</strong>zgerald. I would have to agree w<strong>it</strong>h this consensus.<br />
This vocal performance is perfection. However, her second feature “La<br />
Puerta” which recalls the nostalgic music of the Buena Vista Social Club<br />
albe<strong>it</strong> w<strong>it</strong>h considerably more b<strong>it</strong>e and snap is even better and another<br />
highlight on this album.
“Roy Allan” offers another approach to Latin music but this time<br />
refracted very much through a contemporary jazz lens and features the<br />
aforementioned Mr. Rubin’s Wes Montgomery influenced gu<strong>it</strong>ar. There is<br />
some terrific unaccompanied section work in this Hargrove chart where<br />
the level of energy that is built up is pretty staggering. The following<br />
“Tschpiso” again pushes the music into a more contemporary feel and<br />
concludes w<strong>it</strong>h a riff that culminates in yet another exc<strong>it</strong>ing crescendo<br />
before returning to the main theme. Again, this chart is not too dissimilar<br />
to the kind of music played by Tom Harrell albe<strong>it</strong> several notches<br />
higher in the exc<strong>it</strong>ement stakes. The album concludes w<strong>it</strong>h the gentle<br />
“Trust.”<br />
All told, <strong>it</strong> is difficult to reign in my enthusiasm for this record. The<br />
music is very varied, there are some brilliant solos and the band creates<br />
much genuine exc<strong>it</strong>ement as opposed to simply running down some<br />
charts in the studio. This is a record that seems to get better and better<br />
w<strong>it</strong>h every listen. I think the band is terrific and the arrangements offer a<br />
contrasting programme that will appeal to most tastes. On top of this,<br />
the appearance of Roberta Gambarini is the icing on the cake. So far,<br />
this is the best new CD of 2009 in my opinion. I can’t recommend “Emergence”<br />
strongly enough. (Ian Thumwood)<br />
VIVIANE HOULE – TREIZE
Label: Drip Audio<br />
Release Date: October 2009<br />
Tracklist: Mandrake; Molehills Mumps; Paperthin; Gratte-Moi Le Dos; Quiet Eyes; It’s<br />
Not the Moon; Betters and Bads; Finely Tuned is My Heart; Au Revas; A L<strong>it</strong>tle Storm;<br />
Bells Hung in a Tree; Song not for You; Curve<br />
Personnel: Viviane Houle: vocals and texts, w<strong>it</strong>h; Peggy Lee: cello (1); Lisa Miller: piano<br />
(2); Coat Cooke: saxophone (3); Kenton Loewen: drums (4); Ron Samworth: gu<strong>it</strong>ar (5);<br />
Chris Gestrin: analog keyboards and live sampling (6); Jesse Zubot: violin (7); Jeremy<br />
Berkman: trombone (8); Paul Plimley: piano (9); Jeff Younger: gu<strong>it</strong>ar (10); Clyde Reed:<br />
bass (11); Brent Belke: gu<strong>it</strong>ar (12); Stefan Sumlov<strong>it</strong>z: kenaxis (13)<br />
I suppose I would say that Houle’s voice, like the voices of Phil<br />
Minton and Maggie Nicols, is essentially dramatic, in contrast to Ute<br />
Wassermann or Ami Yoshida, whose voices undoubtedly have an impact<br />
intense enough to be called ‘dramatic’, but whose concern seems<br />
primarily textural. Nonetheless, she combines elements of the latter<br />
approach as well; given that she duets w<strong>it</strong>h such a wide range of<br />
musicians and instruments on the album, an abil<strong>it</strong>y for textural<br />
adaptation is a must. Generally, she stays away from anything<br />
resembling conventional song mode, preferring to unleash hag cackles,<br />
wordless, sung-spoken parodies of dialogue, and stretched moans from<br />
the back of the throat. When she’s paired w<strong>it</strong>h a musician who adopts a<br />
similar approach – focussing in on a particular range of sonic details,<br />
using ‘non-standard techniques’ – such a style comes across at both <strong>it</strong>s<br />
most rigorous and <strong>it</strong>s most disturbing/ emotionally arresting. For<br />
instance: the opening piece, w<strong>it</strong>h cellist Peggy Lee, where the ‘song-like’<br />
cello sings out in a much more forceful and less elegant way than one<br />
might expect from classical repertoire, or the fourth track, where<br />
drummer Kenton Loewen begins w<strong>it</strong>h high-p<strong>it</strong>ched scrapes that treat his<br />
k<strong>it</strong> as texture rather than rhythm (as on Sean Meehan’s duo album w<strong>it</strong>h<br />
Sachiko M), before picking up on a nervous, insect-like qual<strong>it</strong>y to Houle’s<br />
vocals as they dance round, rather than in, rhythm.<br />
A few of the tracks have ‘lyrics’, sometimes quietly spoken as<br />
poetry, sometimes delivered as a kind of improvised, sung med<strong>it</strong>ation<br />
w<strong>it</strong>h an inward-looking, melancholic qual<strong>it</strong>y to <strong>it</strong> like a less jazzy version<br />
of Patty Waters (the eleventh track, w<strong>it</strong>h Clyde Reed’s acoustic bass).<br />
Houle’s voice is also treated w<strong>it</strong>h echo and some other electronic means<br />
(as on the final, dark ambient style track); I’m not sure whether these<br />
were live effects or added at the post-production stage, and, in any case,<br />
<strong>it</strong> doesn’t really matter, as they provide an atmospheric qual<strong>it</strong>y w<strong>it</strong>hout<br />
dominating at the expense of musical interaction.<br />
In some ways, this album might have come across as something of<br />
a showcase – <strong>it</strong> is, after all, a debut, and Houle could be forgiven for<br />
showing off what she can do w<strong>it</strong>h her voice. Another danger might have<br />
been a lack of un<strong>it</strong>y, given the variety of accompanists. I’m pleased to
eport, though, that both traps are successfully negotiated: there is<br />
variety, and Houle does do a lot of different things w<strong>it</strong>h her voice, but<br />
there’s also a careful, if lop-sided sense of ‘plot’ to the record (a plot<br />
dictated more by the ever-changing emotional response to stimuli than<br />
by any mechanical impos<strong>it</strong>ion). Juxtapos<strong>it</strong>ions between tracks are<br />
sometimes so seamless that one can barely tell one track has ended and<br />
another begun, and sometimes audaciously abrasive and noticeable– as<br />
when the quiet, jazz-tinged duet w<strong>it</strong>h Clyde Reed gives way to Brent<br />
Belke’s grungy avant-rock gu<strong>it</strong>ar and Houle comes out screaming. All in<br />
all, <strong>it</strong>’s a fine piece of work from an artist clearly dedicated to free<br />
improvisation, but also willing, in a manner that’s not at all selfconscious<br />
or superficial, to embrace the sounds of other genres: jazz,<br />
rock, ambient, electronic. (DG)<br />
ANNETE KREBS/ TOSHIMARU NAKAMURA – SIYU<br />
Label: SoSed<strong>it</strong>ions Release Date: 2008 Tracklist: Wrr; Bsb<br />
Personnel: Annette Krebs: gu<strong>it</strong>ar, mixing board, tapes, objects;<br />
Toshimaru Nakamuru: no-input mixing board<br />
Of the two musicians, Krebs produces the greater variety of<br />
textures (scrunches, clicks, klangs, percussion, fragments of speed-up<br />
tape, radio static), but the fading and swelling of Nakamaru’s unadorned<br />
sine tones is essential in creating the dynamics of the music, organising<br />
and shaping the sound. What emerges is not, like a sculpture, something<br />
you can step back and see as a whole, but an ongoing construction<br />
which creates <strong>it</strong>self anew each time <strong>it</strong> is played; a series of fortunate<br />
events, each melding into the next so you’d be hard-pressed to say where<br />
one ended and another began. <strong>Here</strong> we have mastery of trans<strong>it</strong>ion 1 –<br />
though that phrase implies a more nicely, precisely ordered structural<br />
edifice than ‘Siyu’ offers. Such structure is simply not what the listener’s<br />
ear will experience when faced w<strong>it</strong>h fifty minutes of very high sine tones<br />
and spluttering, spl<strong>it</strong>ting, flickering rhythm and crackle. Even the tape<br />
fragments of disembodied human voice become alien, in this, the<br />
electronic world’s intrusion into the comfort zone. Yet no more alien than<br />
a society technologized for war, at all costs intending to further brute<br />
instincts even if under veneers of ‘growth’, ‘progress’, ‘sophistication’, the<br />
‘organic’ flow of oil and blood and armed men in coffins, pipelines,<br />
streets, screens, screams.<br />
This alien voices the new song then, both as antidote to and as<br />
part of the problem; both the balm and the wound, to be heard, to be<br />
healed. In Krebs’ hands and in Nakamura’s hands music-making<br />
1 I use words like Event, Trans<strong>it</strong>ion; maybe, however, <strong>it</strong> would be better to talk about overlapping<br />
spheres of activ<strong>it</strong>y (spheres might also be the form taken by the shapes in sound that Nakamura makes,<br />
if they were translated visually).
ecomes an act, involving listening, being, reacting. That’s more music to<br />
me than what is well-executed (executed w<strong>it</strong>h the clean, swift blow of the<br />
axe – w<strong>it</strong>hout a hint of rust, or of the blood that’s swept away (death<br />
w<strong>it</strong>hout the body; the blank neatness of the controlled ending)). Of<br />
course, in <strong>it</strong>s own realm, ‘Siyu’ is supremely well-executed (what-ever<br />
‘well’ means.) <strong>Here</strong>, then, is what this well springs. (DG)<br />
THE PEGGY LEE BAND – NEW CODE<br />
Label: Drip Audio<br />
Release Date: 2008<br />
Tracklisting: All I Really Want to Do; Preparations; Offshoot 1; Not a Wake Up Call;<br />
Floating Island; Offshoot 2; Scribble Town; Tug; Offshoot 3; Walk Me Through; Shifting<br />
Tide; Lost in the Stars<br />
Personnel: Brad Turner: trumpet, flugelhorn; Jon Bentley: tenor saxophone; Jeremy<br />
Berkman: trombone; Peggy Lee: cello; Ron Samworth, Tony Wilson: electric and<br />
acoustic gu<strong>it</strong>ars; Andre Lachance: electric bass; Dylan van der Schyff: drums<br />
Not exactly free jazz (though there are three freely improvised<br />
pieces), this 2008 release is similar to the Tony Wilson Sextet’s ‘The<br />
People Look Like Flowers At Last’ (another all-Canadian album released
on Drip Audio), in that <strong>it</strong>s carefully structured arrangements, directed<br />
towards emotional climaxes, leave plenty of space for improvisation.<br />
Indeed, the compos<strong>it</strong>ional aspect isn’t ‘restrictive’ in the slightest; richly<br />
harmonized melodies give way to sections where <strong>it</strong>’s the responsibil<strong>it</strong>y of<br />
the individual players to sustain and expand on the texture that’s been<br />
established, while emphatic rhythms and repet<strong>it</strong>ive riffs provide the<br />
trans<strong>it</strong>ional anchor between ‘themes’ and ‘solos’, so that things never feel<br />
merely schematic (‘we’ve played the head now, let’s get on and blow’).<br />
A record of original compos<strong>it</strong>ions by band-leader Peggy Lee, and<br />
improvisations by various members of the group, ‘New Code’ opens and<br />
closes w<strong>it</strong>h pieces representative of <strong>it</strong>s general intentions. Bob Dylan’s<br />
‘All I Want to Do’ comes across as joyfully bubbling and flowing; the<br />
simple melody isn’t altered too much, though some rather nifty voicings<br />
for the horns and a nice l<strong>it</strong>tle countermelody bolster <strong>it</strong> up a l<strong>it</strong>tle, but<br />
once the solos come in, volumes rise and textures thicken, w<strong>it</strong>h high<br />
scribbling cello, babbling trumpet, wauling trombone and gu<strong>it</strong>ars that<br />
suddenly vault from the brink of atonal<strong>it</strong>y into a country-flavoured riff<br />
that smoothly ushers in the fade back to the original melody. The showtune<br />
melody of Kurt Weill’s ‘Lost in the Stars’, meanwhile, is treated w<strong>it</strong>h<br />
what at first seems like a rather undue reverence; as the track builds,<br />
though, and the melody repeats in hymn-like unison over Dylan van der<br />
Schyff’s ecstatically crashing drums, <strong>it</strong>’s clear both that such reverence<br />
is not misplaced, and also that <strong>it</strong>’s not really reverence. Rather, <strong>it</strong>’s a<br />
confidence in treating treat pre-existing compos<strong>it</strong>ional material w<strong>it</strong>h an<br />
improvisational freshness and verve, while maintaining a keen sense of<br />
ensemble arrangement and an ever-present clar<strong>it</strong>y of structure. The<br />
effect in this particular instance is a l<strong>it</strong>tle similar to Otomo Yoshihide’s<br />
‘Theme from Canary’, though <strong>it</strong> doesn’t build to qu<strong>it</strong>e such splendidly<br />
passionate heights (partly given that <strong>it</strong>’s so much shorter: most of the<br />
tracks on this record don’t average much more than five minutes each).<br />
Both the Dylan and the Weill, then, are testament to this band’s<br />
fine sense of climax, their abil<strong>it</strong>y to imperceptibly sw<strong>it</strong>ch gears and build<br />
up a fine head of steam from originally quiet foundations. Elsewhere, the<br />
process is reversed, as they trans<strong>it</strong>ion smoothly (via a frantic fading loop)<br />
from the noisy, snarling fuzz gu<strong>it</strong>ar gu<strong>it</strong>ar solo of ‘Not a Wake Up Call’ to<br />
the harmonically ambiguous but serene gu<strong>it</strong>ar riff which lies under the<br />
swooning and rather sad horn melodies of ‘Fading Island’.<br />
‘Preparations’ follows the opening Dylan cover, and is, at nearly<br />
nine minutes, the longest track on the album. After a rather hes<strong>it</strong>ant<br />
improvised opening, which sounds rather like treading water until the<br />
‘track proper’ gets under way, a simple three-note melody (very similar to<br />
one which appears on the recent album by one of the gu<strong>it</strong>arists on this
date, Tony Wilson) allows the band to build up a great head of steam.<br />
W<strong>it</strong>h space to stretch out, their playing has a passionate flow which<br />
characterizes the disc – Lee’s cello threads <strong>it</strong>s way through trumpet,<br />
saxophone and trombone melodies and countermelodies, Dylan van der<br />
Schyff egging everyone on w<strong>it</strong>h cymbal flourishes, rolls and crashes.<br />
Some unexpected but delightful Gil Evans-flavoured thematic material<br />
closes the piece in fine ‘Sketches of Spain’ fashion.<br />
The first of three ‘Offshoots’ – short improvisations for smaller<br />
groupings of the various band members – is a good opportun<strong>it</strong>y to hear<br />
Jeremy Berkman’s woozily smeared trombone, as part of a prickly<br />
texture created by Ron Samworth’s hard-edged plucking and grinding<br />
and van der Schyff’s steel-jawed repet<strong>it</strong>ions. ‘Not a Wake Up Call’ and<br />
‘Floating Island’ I’ve already discussed, and they are perhaps the disc<br />
highlights. Another ‘Offshoot’ finds the duo of Lee and trumpeter Brad<br />
Turner opening w<strong>it</strong>h subdued complementary melodic lines; as these<br />
naturally spiral into denser and then more broken realms, Lee abandons<br />
smooth arco playing for crackling, physically immediate plucking and<br />
strumming approach that puts me in mind of Abdul Wadud’s fine solo<br />
recording from, ‘By Myself.’ ‘Scribble Town’ sets out <strong>it</strong>s intentions from<br />
the outset, w<strong>it</strong>h brutal twin gu<strong>it</strong>ar under a melody whose constant<br />
repet<strong>it</strong>ions drive things to panic in a manner which would make Bernard<br />
Hermann proud. It’s a panic which possesses Jon Bentley’s tenor sax as<br />
he takes the track’s only solo, lingering on a high register melody as if to<br />
resist <strong>it</strong> only to throw himself back into tonguing, multiphonics and<br />
sped-up jazz frenzies. The emotional atmosphere remains fraught on<br />
‘Tug’ (<strong>it</strong> strikes me that Lee could wr<strong>it</strong>e a fine film-noir score if she so<br />
desired); as if to arrest this, a secondary rhythmic figure becomes the<br />
primary focus, allowing Brad Turner to lay down a rather more mellow<br />
jazz solo over less distorted gu<strong>it</strong>ars, w<strong>it</strong>h Lee’s held notes easing out<br />
behind. The original melody returns, things fading out in a way that<br />
prepares ground for the third and final ‘Offshoot’, where Bentley’s almost<br />
Evan-Parker-like saxophone engages in inquis<strong>it</strong>ive melodic bursts that<br />
are at first quietly melodic and gradually wind down to a more hushed<br />
uncertainty, complemented by Lachance’s unobtrusive prodding and<br />
Wilson’s high-p<strong>it</strong>ched crackles. ‘Walk Me Through’ finds Lee solo for the<br />
first time, bowing sweet, Oriental-style high notes which continue to sing<br />
out as Brad Turner guides the slowly unfolding melody along <strong>it</strong>s way,<br />
over a quietly insistent background riff. ‘Shifting Tide’ again builds<br />
slowly, Bentley’s in<strong>it</strong>ial melodic probes falling into a suggestion of John<br />
Coltrane’s ‘Welcome’ but quickly shying away and treading a subdued<br />
rhapsodic path, full of soft tongued flurries, over another texture which<br />
gradually builds in rhythmic insistence and volume. And then the<br />
reverent seren<strong>it</strong>y of the previously discussed Kurt Weill piece, to close<br />
what is a very satisfying album. (DG)
DAVE MERSON HESS – MUSIC FROM THE FILM ‘PRESENCE’<br />
Label: Headphonica<br />
Release Date: 2009<br />
Tracklist: Onomatopoeia; Didn’t Used to Be This Way; I Like Dogs; What is Its Vessell?;<br />
Blur and Bleed; Haunted Kid; Like Dominoes; Friends…Home; Subway Sleep;<br />
Fishmerna; Love Theme Intro; Love Theme; Static/Headtrop/Tinkly Piano; Drive;<br />
Caught in a Fingerprint; Presence Theme; Drive Outtake<br />
Personnel: Dave Merson-Hess: Mellotron, Moog and other analog synthesizers, VST<br />
emulations, organ drones, vibraphone, heavily delayed drums, and electric gu<strong>it</strong>ar<br />
The experience of listening to a film soundtrack tends to be one<br />
that falls slightly outside the usual rem<strong>it</strong>s, as what one hears follows the<br />
logic of what unfolds on screen rather than considerations relating to the<br />
organisation and development of a record. Thus, we hear the same<br />
theme, or themes, recurring throughout, in different arrangements, from<br />
different angles; the actual amount of original melodic material is qu<strong>it</strong>e<br />
slight, w<strong>it</strong>h much of the music’s complex<strong>it</strong>y occurring through the<br />
intricacy and variety of the variations spun upon <strong>it</strong>. In the case of Dave<br />
Merson-Hess’ score for the independent sci-fi/horror movie ‘Presence’,<br />
even strong and definable melody as such is not the main cr<strong>it</strong>erion;<br />
rather, I’m reminded of Brian Eno’s comment that texture and
atmosphere now takes predominance over melody in contemporary pop<br />
music. The cues here are driven along by various beats which provide a<br />
sense of forward-momentum, while also underlining a sense of essential<br />
stasis, of going round in circles, that resembles the trapped s<strong>it</strong>uation of<br />
the film’s lone protagonist. Time as an important theme is introduced in<br />
the opening number, ‘Onomatopeia’, where what sounds like an<br />
electronic version of a speeded-up heartbeat combines w<strong>it</strong>h sounds that<br />
evoke sirens and the low, throbbing hum of engines in an eerie blurring<br />
of the human and the machine. The track sounds purposeful –given that<br />
we associate a pulse w<strong>it</strong>h the ongoing ‘presence’ of life, and think of<br />
machines as fulfilling some sort of continuing purpose – but is actually<br />
going nowhere, the siren sounds continuing onto the next piece as if <strong>it</strong><br />
were all part of the same continuum. A sense of dread hovers over most<br />
of the tracks – most palpably on the grinding electric gu<strong>it</strong>ars of ‘Drive’,<br />
but even on the ‘Love Theme’, in which electronic organ sounds and<br />
throbbing electronics seem stuck in a minimalist loop that soon fades<br />
into a whirr of ghost-voiced static. This is then, in many ways, a bleak<br />
listen, the open-ended nature of <strong>it</strong>s sounds reflecting the empty spaces<br />
and slow-paced, dream-like qual<strong>it</strong>y of the film <strong>it</strong> accompanies: spacedout<br />
and often rather melancholy (the final two tracks in particular), <strong>it</strong>s<br />
purpose is to underline a certain set of moods rather than to set a<br />
defin<strong>it</strong>e direction. Even if one hasn’t seen the film, the images triggered<br />
in one’s head will make a movie of their own, full of the images and only<br />
half-registered thoughts that drift around one’s head in those uncertain,<br />
semi-conscious moments before sleep. (DG)<br />
MIMESYS – MIMESYS<br />
Label: Deadalus Records<br />
Release Date: December 2006<br />
Tracklist: mimesys 1-8<br />
Personnel: Ugo Boscain: alto and contrabass clarinet; Michele Spanghero: double bass<br />
<strong>Here</strong> we have a disc of mesmerizing duo improvisations by doublebassist<br />
Michele Spanghero and contra-bass clarinetist Ugo Boscain.<br />
Rather than the woody, sonorous darkness of the Eric Dolphy/Richard<br />
Davis duets, what we often hear is the sound of two instruments being<br />
pushed above their ‘normal’ range, howling clarinet and wrenching bass<br />
harmonics swirling and echoing round each other in continuous eddies<br />
or almost static, hovering suspensions. The effect is particularly eerie on<br />
the seventh track, Boscain’s high multiphonics and deep quacks<br />
combining w<strong>it</strong>h Spanghero’s slow bowing motions to mess w<strong>it</strong>h one’s<br />
perception of sound-space in a way that normally only electronic music<br />
can. There’s also a lovely moment five minutes into the second track<br />
where Spanghero starts to tentatively pluck out a jazzy melody<br />
reminiscent of ‘It Don’t Mean a Thing if <strong>it</strong> ain’t got that Swing’ before
things imperceptibly sweep up to hoarse clarinet barks and rasping<br />
repeated arco bass figures. It’s not exactly a moment of light relief or<br />
even of particular contrast (<strong>it</strong>’s a very brief moment of idiomatic playing),<br />
but, by standing out as <strong>it</strong> does, <strong>it</strong> illustrates just how focused these two<br />
musicians are on a particular area of sonic enquiry – not that their<br />
music is by any means monochromatic, but that <strong>it</strong> lulls and troubles into<br />
a state of med<strong>it</strong>ation where the heart beats slower, the breathing<br />
becomes more measured, the mind at once more active in <strong>it</strong>s perceptions<br />
of minute details and more restful in <strong>it</strong>s focus on a specific activ<strong>it</strong>y and<br />
ambience. (DG)<br />
JOE MORRIS – COLORFIELD<br />
Label: ESP-Disk<br />
Release Date: 2009<br />
Tracklisting: Transparent; Silver Sun; Purple Distant; Blue Orange Curves<br />
Personnel: Joe Morris: gu<strong>it</strong>ar; Steve Lantner: piano; Luther Gray: drums<br />
Joe Morris’ latest is an improvised trio recording, and the line-up<br />
(gu<strong>it</strong>ar, piano, drums), combined w<strong>it</strong>h Morris’ known procliv<strong>it</strong>ies towards<br />
a clean gu<strong>it</strong>ar tone and a linear (melodic) approach, suggest that we<br />
might expect some ‘chamber jazz.’ In some ways this would be right; the<br />
music, though by no means harmonically straight-forward or changes<br />
based, is not b<strong>it</strong>ingly atonal, and the textures are characterized by an
absence of the harsh sonor<strong>it</strong>ies often associated w<strong>it</strong>h ‘free’ gu<strong>it</strong>ar playing.<br />
Yet ‘chamber jazz’ also suggests a certain ‘pol<strong>it</strong>eness’ – or, at least, an<br />
unruffled professionalism which might be used to describe Morris’<br />
approach w<strong>it</strong>h some accuracy (perhaps by those less disposed to admire<br />
his work). However, this does <strong>it</strong> a disservice; the music by no means<br />
lacks inquis<strong>it</strong>iveness and a sense of exploration, and, indeed, the trio’s<br />
approach leads them to wider areas and greater discoveries than a more<br />
simplistic feed-back drenched approach would. ‘Colorfield’ is all about<br />
the notes that are played, about having something to say when you play,<br />
about avoiding meandering and smearing, about building up an overall<br />
texture from the interaction of small details.<br />
Lantner and Morris really explo<strong>it</strong> the overlap between gu<strong>it</strong>ar and<br />
piano, the melodic reflexes of both players so finely tuned that at certain<br />
points their lines intersect and overlap in a way which makes them qu<strong>it</strong>e<br />
hard to tell apart; a relationship in which both pursue independent<br />
courses, but in which both are heading in the same general direction.<br />
Perhaps that metaphor’s too goal-oriented; rather, they take different<br />
lines for walks along the same course, no matter where they end up.<br />
Morris’ liner notes say <strong>it</strong>’s melodic playing that’s emphasized, and<br />
that’s true; but this doesn’t conflict w<strong>it</strong>h the ‘colorfield’ metaphor, as the<br />
closeness of melodic interaction creates a collective feel. If, at a certain<br />
point, Morris plays around w<strong>it</strong>h figures that come across like skew-wiff<br />
jazz comping, or if Lantner retreats into the background somewhat at<br />
certain points, generally the feel is not of accompaniment but of<br />
togetherness. (This may be partly due to the fact that the trio is what<br />
would be described as a ‘rhythm section,’ in orthodox jazz terminology –<br />
there’s no saxophonist or trumpeter to automatically impose themselves<br />
into a lead role.)<br />
Luther Gray’s drums in that sense are the closest to being the odd<br />
one out, as they can’t explo<strong>it</strong> the same harmonic resources and<br />
colouristic palette of gu<strong>it</strong>ar and piano; so he tends to keep things tight,<br />
restricted, avoiding the free drummer’s usual reliance on cymbals for<br />
more tapping, a more tautly rhythmic approach. This can be heard most<br />
explic<strong>it</strong>ly on the brief drum solos he takes on the final two tracks, where<br />
he explores small areas of rhythmic and timbral detail to an effect that’s<br />
not exactly hypnotic but is deeply absorbing.<br />
Tempos are generally fast, but not super-fast, high energy, free jazz<br />
style; the penultimate track is the slowest, opening w<strong>it</strong>h Lantner’s<br />
vaguely Messiaen-flavoured piano chords, and gradually extrapolating<br />
from their in-built intens<strong>it</strong>y, while the concluding piece is the fastest,<br />
Lantner playing clusters and runs at the beginning in a way which
makes one realize how subtly melodic his playing has been elsewhere,<br />
how his clusters are unobtrusive and played w<strong>it</strong>h a mind towards<br />
harmonic openness and detail, rather than a generalized splash. As ever<br />
w<strong>it</strong>h Morris, then, this is serious music, concentrated and worthy of<br />
repeated listenings. (DG)<br />
PROFOUND SOUND TRIO – OPUS DE LIFE<br />
Label: Porter Records<br />
Release Date: 2009<br />
Tracklist: This Way, Please; Call Paul; Whirligging; Beyonder; Futur<strong>it</strong>y<br />
Personnel: Andrew Cyrille: drums; Paul Dunmall: tenor sax, bagpipes; Henry Grimes:<br />
bass, violin<br />
Add<strong>it</strong>ional Information: Recorded in concert at the Vision Festival, June 14 th 2008.<br />
‘Opus de Life’ might be translated as ‘Life’s Work’, and as such<br />
implies that this music is some sort of summation of the lives’ work of<br />
each of these three vastly experienced musicians. This might seem to be<br />
rather a cliché; in fact, though, <strong>it</strong> is more than this, for <strong>it</strong> actually <strong>it</strong> tells<br />
us something about the music <strong>it</strong>self, and the att<strong>it</strong>ude that goes into <strong>it</strong>s<br />
creation. There is a balance between the notion of ‘work’ (opus) and the<br />
notion of ‘playing’: the joy of spontaneous discovery and the abil<strong>it</strong>y to<br />
move wherever one pleases is coupled to the sense of responsibil<strong>it</strong>y<br />
imparted by making a music that is “as serious as your life,” that is work<br />
in a real sense, that is doing something for a purpose, as a contribution<br />
to a human s<strong>it</strong>uation (while at the same time escaping the checklistticking<br />
att<strong>it</strong>ude that ensnares human creativ<strong>it</strong>y and the abil<strong>it</strong>y to grow<br />
and develop in the world). The musicians play their lives as well as just
playing music; and they also play the lives of all those who have<br />
contributed to the growth of jazz as an art form, as a mode of creative<br />
expression.<br />
Because of this, we can say w<strong>it</strong>h Charles Mingus that, “if you want<br />
to escape real<strong>it</strong>y, you better leave” before the musicians start playing. 1<br />
Every time that Cyrille, Dunmall and Grimes play, they play the material<br />
that shapes their lives both at that moment and in all the moments that<br />
led up to <strong>it</strong>, that shaped them and that shaped their music. Perhaps too,<br />
as well as encapsulating past and present in a succession of unfolding<br />
flows of sounds and ideas, their music hints at future potential, future<br />
development – not only in the sense that the Profound Sound Trio will go<br />
on to play another gig, and that each individual musician will play again<br />
in any number of different contexts, and not only in the sense that the<br />
recording of the performance will be listened to in many places and<br />
s<strong>it</strong>uations around the world, that in this vast network many lives will be<br />
touched; not only all these things, but also that the interactions<br />
occurring here demonstrate a kind of human relation which, god knows,<br />
we need more of in this world. Co-operation, sens<strong>it</strong>iv<strong>it</strong>y, judging what<br />
one does in relation to how <strong>it</strong> impacts on others, participating in a<br />
collective texture which incorporates individual lines of argument,<br />
sometimes perfectly complementary, sometimes apparently divergent,<br />
creating out of the interaction of three musical personal<strong>it</strong>ies a fourth<br />
ent<strong>it</strong>y, a music w<strong>it</strong>h a life of <strong>it</strong>s own.<br />
What exactly is the content of a music w<strong>it</strong>h such attributes?<br />
Dunmall is clearly coming out of the post-Coltrane trad<strong>it</strong>ion; he blows<br />
hard and fast, but w<strong>it</strong>h sens<strong>it</strong>iv<strong>it</strong>y, going w<strong>it</strong>h the flow of the music,<br />
dropping in and out, leaving space and letting new sections develop from<br />
the old. At one point his tone is so raspingly harsh that the audience is<br />
driven on to spontaneous cheers – though, desp<strong>it</strong>e the frequent assertion<br />
that free jazz is an ‘angry music’, what comes out above all from this<br />
recording is the sense of joy, exhilaration, of life force and life work that<br />
goes into and comes out of playing. Cyrille never feels like he is giving a<br />
drum masterclass or display, never feels like he is showing off; by<br />
reducing volume and concentrating on just a few <strong>it</strong>ems of his k<strong>it</strong> at<br />
certain points, he gives a breathing space in the texture for different<br />
timbres, different sounds to be heard. Grimes, meanwhile, combines his<br />
unflagging energy on the bass w<strong>it</strong>h a wonderfully free, folk-influenced<br />
style on violin that is an entirely new sound in the jazz world.<br />
Particularly when combined w<strong>it</strong>h Dunmall’s bagpipes, we are lifted into<br />
an entirely new and surprising space, where elements of the dance<br />
emerge in what the track t<strong>it</strong>le accurately describes as ‘Whirligging’ – a<br />
kind of perpetual motion, a spinning intertwining of voices and rhythms,<br />
1 Thanks to Joel Futterman for providing me w<strong>it</strong>h this quotation.
spiralling arcs of melody climbing over and under each other. The<br />
captivating nature of such joyous and often frenetic forms spurs on the<br />
audience to become a participant in the music, not just a passive<br />
recipient of <strong>it</strong>; when they clap after a solo or a particularly impressive<br />
passage, this is not just the automatic response triggered by the concert<br />
s<strong>it</strong>uation (as <strong>it</strong> might be on a classical recording), but an actual<br />
outpouring of thanks and appreciation for the way the music has moved<br />
them. (DG)<br />
GIL SCOTT-HERON – I’M NEW HERE<br />
Label: XL Recordings<br />
Release Date: February 2010<br />
Tracklist: On Coming From a Broken Home (Part 1); Me And The Devil; I’m New <strong>Here</strong>;<br />
Your Soul And Mine; Parents (Interlude); I’ll Take Care Of You; Being Blessed
(Interlude); Where Did The Night Go; I Was Guided (Interlude); New York Is Killing Me;<br />
Certain Things (Interlude); Running; The Crutch; I’ve Been Me (Interlude); On Coming<br />
From a Broken Home (Part 2)<br />
Personnel: Gil Scott-Heron: vocals; Damon Albarn: keyboards (track 2); Pat Sullivan:<br />
acoustic gu<strong>it</strong>ar (track 3); Christiana Liberis, Mary Jo Stilp, Mike Block, Una Tone:<br />
strings (tracks 4, 6, 13); Kim Jordan: piano (track 6), add<strong>it</strong>ional vocals (track 10);<br />
Michelle Hutcherson, Tiona Hall, Tyria Stokes: background vocals (track 10); Chris<br />
Cunningham: gu<strong>it</strong>ar, synthesizer (track 10); Richard Russell: production<br />
Gil Scott-Heron: vocals; Pat Sullivan: acoustic gu<strong>it</strong>ar; Richard Russell: production<br />
Let’s not talk about the release of this new album as an ‘event’, if<br />
we can help <strong>it</strong>. Yes, Gil Scott-Heron, ‘godfather of rap’, a hugely<br />
important voice in bringing socially-conscious messages to both black<br />
and wh<strong>it</strong>e youth, has not recorded an album since 1994’s ‘Spir<strong>it</strong>s’. Yes,<br />
he has been in and out of prison, has had plans for recordings and for<br />
books planned and then postponed, has made interm<strong>it</strong>tent public<br />
appearances but been generally been shrouded in rumours of ill-health<br />
and personal breakdown. Yes, all this has happened – and the record’s<br />
t<strong>it</strong>le suggests a very specific engagement w<strong>it</strong>h the notion that Heron is a<br />
quote-unquote major artist who must add to his legacy, must teach us<br />
all once again, must justify his absence w<strong>it</strong>h another classic. Might <strong>it</strong><br />
suggest that Heron is a new man, reborn, coming out of hard times w<strong>it</strong>h<br />
his head held high once more? And would that mean a return to the<br />
Heron of the old days, or would <strong>it</strong> mean a re-invented, re-invigorated<br />
artist, starting over just as strong but in a different place?<br />
These are all questions that Heron does not need to answer: he has<br />
done enough, whatever the cr<strong>it</strong>ics may say about missed opportun<strong>it</strong>ies,<br />
not to have to make another statement if he does not wish to; his<br />
pos<strong>it</strong>ion is assured. But, as listeners, as cr<strong>it</strong>ics, we cannot help but make<br />
them – we cannot pretend to listen in a vacuum. And so the comparisons<br />
begin almost as soon as we press play.<br />
First off, after we get past the spoken-word of the opening track,<br />
we’ll notice that Heron sounds less comfortable singing now (perhaps<br />
explaining the choice of Smog’s neo-folk acoustic number ‘I’m New <strong>Here</strong>’<br />
to cover; in the original, Bill Callahan’s sung voice was always on the<br />
brink of shading over into laconic, spoken reflection, and here, Heron<br />
speaks most of the words, singing only the short, recurring chorus). His<br />
voice is now partially possessed of the ‘lived-in’ croak that characterises<br />
latter-day Dylan and Tom Wa<strong>it</strong>s. Though that has always been part of<br />
Wa<strong>it</strong>s’ cigarettes-and-alcohol mystique, and seems to have become an<br />
accentuation of Dylan’s famously less than smooth vocal stylings (albe<strong>it</strong><br />
one so extreme that <strong>it</strong>s burden must be borne by his status as a ‘living<br />
legend’ fondly canonised by both a generation of fading hippies and<br />
Professor Christopher Ricks), in Heron’s case, as his voice was qu<strong>it</strong>e<br />
mellifluous before, this may have necess<strong>it</strong>ated a stylistic change, as <strong>it</strong>
can’t qu<strong>it</strong>e carry the righteous soul style. (It will be interesting to hear<br />
what material Heron tackles in his upcoming live shows – one would<br />
have thought that a record like this wouldn’t really be feasible as a stage<br />
show, and a return to the jazz/soul instrumental styling would seem<br />
likely.)<br />
But, given all this, one must remember that spoken word is how<br />
Heron started off in the first place – his debut record announced him as<br />
‘A New Black Poet’, and <strong>it</strong> is as poet as much as singer that he appears<br />
here. Desp<strong>it</strong>e the apparently low-key t<strong>it</strong>le of that record (‘Small-Talk at<br />
125 th and Lenox’), the wide-ranging subject matter and the urgent desire<br />
to speak pol<strong>it</strong>ical real<strong>it</strong>ies meant that he was soon aligned w<strong>it</strong>h the poetteachers<br />
of the 1970s African-American urban experience: June Jordan,<br />
Jayne Cortez, Larry Neal, Amiri Baraka, Father Amde Hamilton, Otis<br />
O’Solomon, Richard Dedeaux, Jalal Mansur Nuriddin, Abiodun Oyewole,<br />
Umar Bin Hassan. Of course, such a reduction – to a list of names –<br />
would m<strong>it</strong>igate the approach that all these artists shared, one that was<br />
about ‘the revolution of everyday life’, rather than about soapbox<br />
sermonising or pol<strong>it</strong>ical plat<strong>it</strong>udinising divorced from the thoughts and<br />
feelings, the insults and injuries, the imposed or unw<strong>it</strong>ting failures, and,<br />
yes too, the joys that occupied every minute of every day for vast<br />
numbers of ordinary people. Thus, while all the reviews will focus on the<br />
fact that ‘I’m New <strong>Here</strong>’ is a ‘personal’ record, a chastened Heron’s<br />
reaction to years of silence through addiction and imprisonment, <strong>it</strong>’s<br />
worth noting that the material which made his name was precisely<br />
defined by <strong>it</strong>s absence of sloganeering (this is the narrative of ‘The<br />
Revolution Will Not Be Televised’ – moving revolution, as a movement,<br />
away from the simplic<strong>it</strong>y of oft-repeated clichés, catchphrases, and<br />
images), and by <strong>it</strong>s focus on the inseparabil<strong>it</strong>y of the personal and the<br />
pol<strong>it</strong>ical (think of the way the narrative of black poverty and inst<strong>it</strong>utional<br />
callousness in ‘Pieces of a Man’ is filtered through a sentiment of<br />
personal and private grief). Nonetheless, while Heron, particularly as<br />
time went on, did take on the pos<strong>it</strong>ion of spokesman (shouting out<br />
against the Reagan era, then advising the hip-hop artists who followed in<br />
his wake to take more account of their social responsibil<strong>it</strong>y, as potential<br />
teachers of, and voices for their generation), his absence from the scene<br />
perhaps m<strong>it</strong>igates against his effectiveness as the wise elder – having<br />
passed on the mantle, he can self-reflect, in a manner of course still tied<br />
to the forces that shaped him, but w<strong>it</strong>h the specifics of pol<strong>it</strong>ical concern<br />
not voiced explic<strong>it</strong>ly.<br />
Instead, what seems a more imaginatively exaggerated world<br />
emerges. This may result as much as anything from the ominous sound<br />
of the music: <strong>it</strong>s samples and murmurs, <strong>it</strong>s hisses and whirrs are a world<br />
away from the soul-drenched piano chords and jazz bass of the more
familiar work, though the references to Charon and to Satan, and the<br />
flickering, high speed urban ghosts of the video to ‘Me and the Devil’<br />
certainly have their say in the matter too. Given further reflection,<br />
however, one realises that the words frequently turn on themes familiar<br />
enough to count as archetypal. The personal demons of alcohol-fuelled<br />
sleeplessness and the drudge of routine (‘Where Did the Night Go’) form a<br />
quieter, more intimate variation on ‘The Bottle’, while, elsewhere, <strong>it</strong> is the<br />
classic themes of the blues that are returned to: the old theme of urban<br />
decay as contrasted against the simplic<strong>it</strong>y of a poor, but perhaps more<br />
‘honest’, rural past (‘New York is Killing Me’), the attractive yet unsettling<br />
force of the supernatural (‘Me and the Devil’) – where the supernatural<br />
becomes a potent force, not so much structured into simple moral<br />
schemes but figured as part of the complex<strong>it</strong>y of human behaviour, and –<br />
crucially – part of the complex<strong>it</strong>y of the trad<strong>it</strong>ions formed over centuries<br />
by African-Americans reacting to their transplantation and subsequent<br />
isolation in ‘the land of the free’.<br />
Transformation is a major part of this experience – the practice of<br />
‘signifying’ – jazz’s transformation of wh<strong>it</strong>e instruments through black<br />
music – Sun Ra’s transformation of a mult<strong>it</strong>ude of subjects, from<br />
spir<strong>it</strong>uals to space travel – Ray Charles’ transformation of gospel styles<br />
from the sacred to the profane – Heron’s non-televised transformation of<br />
the slogans of consumer culture into their negation. And ‘I’m New <strong>Here</strong>’,<br />
too, is about transformation – two of the stand-out tracks are covers,<br />
back to the roots w<strong>it</strong>h Robert Johnson’s ‘Me and the Devil’, and, more<br />
surprisingly, turning to acoustic gu<strong>it</strong>ar and the (musically) lilting,<br />
(lyrically) self-interrogating ‘I’m New <strong>Here</strong>’ by Bill Calahan (a.k.a. Smog).<br />
Connecting the subdued, whimsical delicacy of wh<strong>it</strong>e folk-trad<strong>it</strong>ion in the<br />
latter, w<strong>it</strong>h the blues’ more extrovert, dramatically strident pos<strong>it</strong>ion<br />
doesn’t so much seal their differences as emphasise the common thread<br />
of vulnerabil<strong>it</strong>y and personal honesty underlining both – as well as the<br />
fact that such apparent straightforwardness is always an assuming of a<br />
role, a self-dramatisation that stands, often ambiguously, for a truth,<br />
rather than presenting that truth direct in <strong>it</strong>self. This is a balance<br />
between frailty and strutting confidence that the record treats as central.<br />
It doesn’t shy away from the increased weakness of Heron’s voice; rather,<br />
the production takes account of <strong>it</strong>, even foregrounds <strong>it</strong> – rather than<br />
compensating w<strong>it</strong>h a thicker background texture, <strong>it</strong> keeps things sparse<br />
and stripped-down, to emphasize rather than to hide.<br />
This turns out to mean that we have here a striking generic<br />
difference to previous Scott-Heron albums. The aforementioned<br />
production is decidedly lo-fi (w<strong>it</strong>h tape hiss and sparing use of murky<br />
samples), and <strong>it</strong>s semi-industrial sound owes much to the spaciousness,<br />
to the minimal, almost empty ghost-traces of dub-step, where samples
drift in and out almost un-noticed, where tracks float along on skeletal<br />
beats that pound w<strong>it</strong>h mechanical precision but that never feel fast or<br />
driving. There are no saxophone, flute or piano solos to add more<br />
complex improvised variations over the song’s basic structures; instead,<br />
there are the pauses between phrases, the tension hanging on each<br />
word, the wa<strong>it</strong> for each weighted-syllable.<br />
And, given that the fifteen-track record lasts for only 28-minutes<br />
(including a number of ‘interludes’ – 10-second, reverb’d snippets of<br />
Heron in conversation), each syllable is most defin<strong>it</strong>ely weighted. Such<br />
brev<strong>it</strong>y makes <strong>it</strong> important to experience the whole thing as one,<br />
continuous, flowing ent<strong>it</strong>y: the recurring Kanye West sample which<br />
opens and closes the record, giving <strong>it</strong> an element of circular<strong>it</strong>y; the<br />
transference of mood from tales of spir<strong>it</strong>s and the threat of damnation<br />
(‘Me and the Devil’, ‘Your Soul and Mine’) to personal ruminations hungover<br />
w<strong>it</strong>h depression and unease (‘Where Did the Night Go’, ‘Running’), to<br />
warmer reminiscences and reflections on a life – the way <strong>it</strong> was lived, the<br />
influences that shaped <strong>it</strong> (the spoken-word snippets). Though the songs<br />
themselves generally have a clear and simple structure, the<br />
predominance of spoken word and the sparseness of the background<br />
mean that tracks don’t spl<strong>it</strong> as easily into single ent<strong>it</strong>ies as they do on,<br />
say, ‘Pieces of a Man’. Because of this, some might slant this as a record<br />
of half-started (or half-finished) demos and sketches, spliced together<br />
and put out there before <strong>it</strong>’s reached the stage of a rounded, completed<br />
artistic statement. Indeed, the quick-fix cr<strong>it</strong>ic in me suggested that very<br />
angle when I first heard these tracks, but, in trying to actually listen to<br />
and experience the album w<strong>it</strong>h an open att<strong>it</strong>ude, I realised that trying to<br />
impose such a structure would not be to take this record on <strong>it</strong>s own<br />
terms – which is the only way <strong>it</strong> is going to make sense. Forget precond<strong>it</strong>ioned<br />
ideas about how an album ‘should’ be const<strong>it</strong>uted – as much<br />
as you can – and, allowing that the distance of time may allow a more<br />
finely-balanced judgement once a few years have passed, I think one can<br />
say that this is a good piece of work: sincere, not bombastic, not<br />
expected; unsentimental but frank, not directed towards melody as on<br />
the classic albums but w<strong>it</strong>h enough melodic aftertaste to satisfy. And in<br />
that sense, assessment as to whether <strong>it</strong> is a ‘major album’ or an<br />
‘important comeback’, and attempts to place <strong>it</strong> into a particular model of<br />
‘late recordings by former legends’ (all the Johnny Cash comparisons<br />
we’ve been hearing), come to seem rather unnecessary, rather out of<br />
place. You can hear <strong>it</strong> for what <strong>it</strong> is, and you should. (DG)
SKARABEE – TLÖN<br />
Label: fbox records<br />
Release Date: 2009<br />
Tracklisting: conversing spir<strong>it</strong>s; lunar landscapes; rewinding metals; insect swarming;<br />
talking in code; scratched surface; machine ghosts<br />
Personnel: Stuart Chalmers: karimba, electronics, contact mic, bows and household<br />
objects<br />
‘Tlön’ is packaged w<strong>it</strong>h an aesthetic that, while pleasingly<br />
minimalist, stays on the right side of mere decoration, of the mere rehashing<br />
of a marketable aesthetic; <strong>it</strong> has a certain edge to <strong>it</strong>, not<br />
succumbing to any overweening conceptual programme, but w<strong>it</strong>h enough<br />
‘content’ to <strong>it</strong> to give the impression of more than a mere exercise in form<br />
or atmosphere. It’s rather like a puzzle that doesn’t qu<strong>it</strong>e work: the way<br />
the cardboard folds out leads to expectations of a map or a poster<br />
appearing if one arranges things the right way, only for the operation to<br />
become impossible just a few stages before the promised unravelling. Dig<br />
the porthole on the cover, the inscrutable marks purporting to mean<br />
something but in the end simply just there, elegant straight lines curving<br />
upwards leg-like, small x’s giving the appearance of a diagram, fragments<br />
of photographs and black and wh<strong>it</strong>e shapes suggesting some realm of<br />
greater activ<strong>it</strong>y that lurks behind the smooth cream cardboard.
The music is similarly inscrutable – measured, slow-paced and<br />
quiet, but w<strong>it</strong>hout reducing <strong>it</strong>self to a pretty background. At times, <strong>it</strong><br />
gives the impression of being qu<strong>it</strong>e soft (the unhurried melodies picked<br />
out on delay-treated thumb piano on the first track), yet fairly harsh<br />
sonor<strong>it</strong>ies are often employed, and, even when this is not the case, the<br />
music is equipped w<strong>it</strong>h plenty of scratchy edges, radio static crackling to<br />
one side of the main area of sonic focus. Like the ‘machine ghosts’ of the<br />
final track, <strong>it</strong> feels as if things never qu<strong>it</strong>e come the surface – indeed,<br />
that Skarabee never makes one bold and defin<strong>it</strong>e statement during the<br />
whole record, instead drifting to the side of fore-grounded ‘event’,<br />
creating a music that at times is so understated one only fully realises<br />
that <strong>it</strong> was there after <strong>it</strong>’s gone.<br />
For me, that’s qu<strong>it</strong>e a wonderful thing. Though <strong>it</strong> has a qu<strong>it</strong>e different<br />
impact to the stripped-down and raw noise aesthetic of Chalmers’<br />
very different project, tusK (where, in an oppos<strong>it</strong>e move, clear, strongly<br />
rhythmic statement is at the forefront of things), both albums share an<br />
approach to the making and manipulation of sound that is above all unfussy.<br />
It takes precision to set in motion and then to control the various<br />
loops and layers which appear here, but the precision that comes across<br />
in the music is of a very different kind, for <strong>it</strong> mingles w<strong>it</strong>h an impression<br />
of vagueness, haze, the half-heard – that which one cannot qu<strong>it</strong>e put<br />
one’s figure on – and the music, while remaining focused, is as much<br />
about inattention as attention. (DG)<br />
WADADA LEO SMITH – SPIRITUAL DIMENSIONS
Label: Cuneiform Records<br />
Release Date: 2009<br />
Tracklist: Disc One: Al-Shadhili’s L<strong>it</strong>any of the Sea: Sunrise; Pacifica; Umar at the<br />
Dome of the Rock, parts 1 & 2; Crossing Sirat; South Central L.A. Kulture; Disc Two:<br />
South Central L.A. Kulture; Angela Davis; Organic; Joy : Spir<strong>it</strong>ual Fire : Joy (In<br />
memory of Imam War<strong>it</strong>h Deen Mohammed)<br />
Personnel: Disc One (Wadada Leo Sm<strong>it</strong>h’s Golden Quintet): Wadada Leo Sm<strong>it</strong>h:<br />
acoustic and electric trumpet; Vijay Iyer: piano, synthesizer; John Lindberg: bass;<br />
Pheeroan AkLaff: drums; Don Moye: drums; Disc Two (Wadada Leo Sm<strong>it</strong>h’s Organic):<br />
Wadada Leo Sm<strong>it</strong>h: trumpet; Michael Gregory, Brandon Ross: electric gu<strong>it</strong>ar; Nels<br />
Cline: 6- & 12-string electric gu<strong>it</strong>ar; Lamar Sm<strong>it</strong>h: electric gu<strong>it</strong>ar (on ‘South Central L.A.<br />
Kulture’ and ‘Joy : Spir<strong>it</strong>ual Fire : Joy’); Okkyung Lee: cello; Skuli Sverrisson: electric<br />
bass; John Lindberg: acoustic bass; Pheeroan AkLaff: drums<br />
Add<strong>it</strong>ional Information: Disc One recorded live at Vision XIII, June 13 th 2008, NYC.<br />
Disc Two recorded live at Firehouse 12, April 17 th 2009, New Haven, CT.<br />
The sound of Leo Sm<strong>it</strong>h’s trumpet, acoustic or played through a<br />
wah-wah pedal, is always bright and direct, whether engaging in piercing<br />
mournful cries, darting melodic interplay, or punchy, jabbing blasts and<br />
flourishes. Sm<strong>it</strong>h is an exceptionally strong player – by which I don’t<br />
mean that he’s aggressively macho. Rather, his strength comes from his<br />
abil<strong>it</strong>y to impart author<strong>it</strong>y, leadership, organisation, even when he seems<br />
to be staying in the background; <strong>it</strong> comes from his abil<strong>it</strong>y to choose the<br />
right note, the right phrase at the right time. As he puts <strong>it</strong>, “in music <strong>it</strong>’s<br />
an aesthetic where the notion of sincer<strong>it</strong>y takes place. For example, <strong>it</strong><br />
would be inappropriate to play a note or a phrase or a rhythm that you<br />
didn’t feel.” 1 Consequently, his presence is felt when he chooses not to<br />
play almost as much as when he does: interjecting w<strong>it</strong>h a brief phrase<br />
that somehow seems to clarify and bring together what the rest of the<br />
band has been playing in his absence, opening up a direction which may<br />
then be sw<strong>it</strong>ched as he comes in again, a few minutes later, w<strong>it</strong>h a totally<br />
new idea. There’s a lot riding on the use of space, on the use of pauses,<br />
re-starts, back-tracks, proclamations, declamations, declarations,<br />
statements, articulations: for though this is music, and not the language<br />
of spoken conversation, speech is always at the back of whatever Sm<strong>it</strong>h<br />
plays, as <strong>it</strong> is w<strong>it</strong>h Ornette Coleman or w<strong>it</strong>h any blues player worth their<br />
salt. The emotional openness, the tempering of strength w<strong>it</strong>h<br />
vulnerabil<strong>it</strong>y, might seem removed from the language of public speech –<br />
at least, to a generation grown cynical at the blandishments of corrupt<br />
pol<strong>it</strong>icians and establishment figures. Desp<strong>it</strong>e this, one would do well to<br />
remember that the music is performed in public (by which I don’t just<br />
mean the audience; for both they and the other musicians in the band<br />
are at once participants and w<strong>it</strong>nesses to what any one musician is<br />
doing). What we hear on ‘Spir<strong>it</strong>ual Dimensions’ melds interior and<br />
exterior, form and feeling, collective r<strong>it</strong>ual and individual consideration<br />
into a whole that might very well be described as ‘organic’.<br />
1 Kevin Le Gendre, “Spir<strong>it</strong>s Rejoice”, Jazzwise, December 2008 / January 2009, Issue 126
Sm<strong>it</strong>h’s trumpet is very much the lead voice on these nine lengthy<br />
pieces, spread over two discs, but the bands are qu<strong>it</strong>e different. The<br />
Golden Quartet, here expanded to a Quintet through the add<strong>it</strong>ion of an<br />
extra drummer, has been one of Sm<strong>it</strong>h’s major projects of recent years,<br />
and though the personnel changes from one release to the next (Anthony<br />
Davis, Malachi Favors, Jack deJohnette and Ronald Shannon Jackson<br />
are all previous members of the group), a defin<strong>it</strong>e continu<strong>it</strong>y is<br />
maintained. In general, one might say that the emphasis is on free<br />
improvisation (I’m aware that Sm<strong>it</strong>h would claim that all his music is<br />
‘free’, that such labels as ‘free jazz’ or ‘free improvisation’ are a<br />
constricting impos<strong>it</strong>ion on open creativ<strong>it</strong>y, and he’s probably right –<br />
nonetheless, I hope that using such a journalistic short-cut allows for a<br />
clear description of what can be heard in the music). ‘Al-Shadhilli’s<br />
L<strong>it</strong>any of the Sea: Sunrise’ opens w<strong>it</strong>h a barely-audible synthesizer wash<br />
before John Lindberg’s twanging bass figures (at once providing a sense<br />
of certain ground and sure placing, and leaving room for a world of<br />
potential<strong>it</strong>ies) and Vijay Iyer’s sonorous piano lay the ground for Sm<strong>it</strong>h,<br />
taking his time, building up statements w<strong>it</strong>h an under-stated force and<br />
clar<strong>it</strong>y to them. It’s tempting to draw parallels between the music and <strong>it</strong>s<br />
dedicatee, the founder of the Tariqa Shadhili, a North African/Egyptian<br />
Sufi order: mysticism might approximate the mysterious logic of<br />
improvised musical interaction, and something of <strong>it</strong>s boundless<br />
openness, <strong>it</strong>s capac<strong>it</strong>y for multiple combinations, directions, and fields of<br />
activ<strong>it</strong>y, is also suggested by the following description of Shadhili: “He<br />
gave me forty sciences. He was an ocean w<strong>it</strong>hout a shore.”<br />
‘Pacifica’: chiming, bell-like, solemn; a pause and a rapid<br />
turnaround, a quick twist and a swish of the tail, a leap into steely moto<br />
perpetuo stylings; sense of the static bursting w<strong>it</strong>h potential<strong>it</strong>ies of<br />
movement. For some reason, the track fades out as <strong>it</strong> changes direction,<br />
tempo quickening from the reverie into which things had settled. ‘Umar<br />
at the Dome of the Rock’ is where one really hears what each individual<br />
musician in the band can do, through a series of ample solos.<br />
Particularly impressive is John Lindberg on acoustic bass, seemingly<br />
heading in a Jimmy Garrison direction w<strong>it</strong>h his strumming, almost<br />
flamenco-flavoured figures, before transforming these into much more<br />
percussive, throbbing, thwacking things, building a totally absorbing<br />
rhythmic intens<strong>it</strong>y. ‘Sirat’: composed phrases melding w<strong>it</strong>h spiralling<br />
improvisations, Vijay Iyer’s dark-hued sprinklings of notes, always<br />
following the logic of each phrase, led on by the cumulative energy and<br />
flow of what he plays, Sm<strong>it</strong>h, by contrast, placing his quick flurries<br />
around held tones.<br />
‘South Central L.A. Kulture’ is performed in two versions, at the<br />
close of the first disc and the start of the second. In both, <strong>it</strong> emerges from
Sm<strong>it</strong>h’s piercing, mournful solo – slow phrases interspersed w<strong>it</strong>h<br />
repeating trilled clarions, like a more br<strong>it</strong>tle, less vulnerable Miles Davis.<br />
That said, Davis, whose 70s music Sm<strong>it</strong>h paid tribute to in the band Yo<br />
Miles!, is an influence not so much in the trumpet phrasing or even tone<br />
(desp<strong>it</strong>e the use of wah-wah pedal), as in the contextual backdrop – most<br />
obviously on the performances by Organic, a gu<strong>it</strong>ar-heavy electric group<br />
whose music tends to sound like jazz fusion. On the Golden Quintet disc,<br />
the rhythmic backdrop is less locked-in, less relentlessly groovefocussed.<br />
This may in fact be due to the presence of two drummers,<br />
upping the rhythmic complex<strong>it</strong>y, though often, they mesh so well that<br />
they almost become one, sticking to particular areas of their own k<strong>it</strong> in<br />
order to complement each other, rather than getting in each-others’ way,<br />
or drowning out the other musicians w<strong>it</strong>h the force of combined<br />
bombast. That said, ‘L.A. Kulture’ soon moves into a very groovy bassline,<br />
sometimes reminiscent of funk, sometimes w<strong>it</strong>h a Latin vibe which<br />
possesses the same sort of capac<strong>it</strong>y to inspire passionate, lengthy solos<br />
as Mingus’ ‘Ysabel’s Table Dance’ from ‘Tijuana Moods’. The ‘Organic’<br />
version emphasises the groove element even more, in a manner very<br />
reminiscent of Yo Miles!, w<strong>it</strong>h added bass gu<strong>it</strong>ar, AkLaff, the single<br />
drummer, laying down a more straightforwardly metronomic rock-beat,<br />
and gu<strong>it</strong>ars swirling and twanging around the groove. For all these<br />
reasons, and desp<strong>it</strong>e the larger size of the band, <strong>it</strong>’s fairly one-directional,<br />
and thus holds less interest for me than the more open interplay of the<br />
Quintet (for instance, Lindberg’s electronically-manipulated acoustic<br />
bass is more texturally interesting and unusual than the fat fusion bass<br />
on disc 2). The roving harmonic approach of Vijay Iyer’s piano is also<br />
missed – ducking in and out and round about, <strong>it</strong> forces <strong>it</strong>self into the<br />
crannies around Sm<strong>it</strong>h’s trumpet, rather than imposing <strong>it</strong>s own<br />
commands. W<strong>it</strong>h Organic, by contrast, the focus is less on detail, more<br />
on a general forward-driving pulse and a particular set of sounds. This<br />
may sound unduly negative, and <strong>it</strong>’s not meant to be: once you accept<br />
that the groove is the way things are going, and that your attention may<br />
occasionally wander, <strong>it</strong> becomes easy to like this music, particularly<br />
when, as on ‘Angela Davis’, Okkyung Lee’s cello is threading <strong>it</strong>s way in<br />
and out of the foreground, or when, as at the start of ‘Organic’, things<br />
turn all spacey, w<strong>it</strong>h reams of sci-fi echo. Sm<strong>it</strong>h is one of the most<br />
important musicians around today, and ‘Spir<strong>it</strong>ual Dimensions’ is ample<br />
evidence of his comm<strong>it</strong>ment, his drive, his charge. (DG)
ESPERANZA SPALDING – ESPERANZA<br />
Label: Heads Up International<br />
Release Date: 2008<br />
Tracklist: Ponta de Areia; I Know You Know; Fall In; I Adore You; Cuerpo y Alma(Body<br />
& Soul); She Got to You; Precious; Mela; Love in Time; Espera; Samba em Preludio.<br />
Personnel: Esperanza Spalding: bass, vocals; Gretchen Parlato: vocals; Jamey Haddad:<br />
percussion; Otis Brown: drums; Nino Josele: acoustic gu<strong>it</strong>ar; Donald Harrison: tenor<br />
saxophone; Horacio "El Negro" Hernandez: drums; Leo Genovese: piano; Ambrose Akinmusire:<br />
trumpet.<br />
If anyone is willing to take a bet on the next most likely big name<br />
in jazz, surely bassist/ singer Esperanza Spalding is worth a punt. Still<br />
only in her mid-twenties, she has already attracted much attention in the<br />
State and currently plays bass in Joe Lovano’s band. Although not her<br />
first offering, this eponymous CD is her most profile and features her<br />
tight band of Leo Genovese’ piano, Jamey Haddad’s percussion and the<br />
drums of Otis Brown. On some of the tracks, this group is augmented by<br />
Donald Harrison’s alto and the p<strong>it</strong>hy trumpet of Ambrose Akinmusire<br />
w<strong>it</strong>h some tunes incorporating e<strong>it</strong>her backing vocals or multi-tracking. If<br />
this suggests an over-produced piece of pop-jazz, the edginess of much of
this music quickly dispels this notion. The leader sw<strong>it</strong>ches between<br />
acoustic and electric bass w<strong>it</strong>h equal facil<strong>it</strong>y.<br />
The opening track is Milton Nascimento’s beautiful “Ponta De<br />
Areia” which received a nice treatment and is a pretty strong opener.<br />
Elsewhere, the disc is essentially made up of Spalding originals which,<br />
by and large, tend to h<strong>it</strong> the spot, w<strong>it</strong>h “Fall in”, a effort for voice and piano,<br />
demonstrating her craftsmanship as a songwr<strong>it</strong>er. Much of the material<br />
has a Brazilian feel to <strong>it</strong> but w<strong>it</strong>h the kind of b<strong>it</strong>e that marked<br />
Tania Maria’s best work of the early 1980’s such as “Come w<strong>it</strong>h me.” This<br />
is typified by the likes of “I adore you” whose t<strong>it</strong>le belies <strong>it</strong>s ebullience.<br />
Elsewhere, the only standard, “Body & Soul”, is re-shaped w<strong>it</strong>h a boisterous<br />
vamp from the leader’s bass and some Portuguese lyrics and<br />
emerges as probably one of the most original arrangements since John<br />
Coltrane’s. This is one of the highlights of a very strong album and allows<br />
the band to stretch out in a fashion that will appeal to most, hardened<br />
jazz fans.<br />
The lyrics are decidedly streetwise and the sentiments expressed<br />
are very much in line w<strong>it</strong>h much contemporary pop. A track like “She got<br />
to you” demonstrates that <strong>it</strong> is possible for a singer to remain thoroughly<br />
up-to-date w<strong>it</strong>hout losing any of the toughness of jazz whereas “Precious”<br />
is a more obvious attempt to appeal to a wider audience w<strong>it</strong>h the fender<br />
Rhodes piano , vocal over-dubbing and some feisty feminist lyrics- a terrific<br />
tune though. In contrast, the largely instrumental “Mela” p<strong>it</strong>s Spalding’s<br />
wordless vocal in unison w<strong>it</strong>h a trumpet in the album’s most<br />
strident and ultimately uncompromising track. This swinging post-bop<br />
track packs one of the biggest punches on the whole CD and demonstrates<br />
that just how tight the band is, the leader’s bass entangling w<strong>it</strong>h<br />
the drums and the Argentine Leo Genovese contributing some tasty piano.<br />
“If that’s true” illustrates just how hip-hop grooves have started to<br />
manifest themselves in jazz before mutating into a quintet outing for<br />
trumpet, alto, bass and drums w<strong>it</strong>h the stripped down nakedness of the<br />
group exposes Spalding’s willingness to mix up the rhythm since the pianist<br />
only plays during his solo.<br />
In summary, this is a hugely impressive record, where Esperanza<br />
Spalding proves herself very much to be a force on the various basses, as<br />
well as a singer / songwr<strong>it</strong>er likely to attract listeners from outside jazz<br />
w<strong>it</strong>hout any concessions to the integr<strong>it</strong>y of the music. W<strong>it</strong>h there already<br />
a plethora of singers of the jazz scene, for once here is a musician who<br />
sounds like she belongs in 2009. Clearly, Esperanza Spalding is already<br />
a major talent and whilst her appearance at Vienne this year was one of<br />
the festival highlights, there seems l<strong>it</strong>tle doubt that this is one of the<br />
most exc<strong>it</strong>ing records by a young artist I have heard this year. Watch this<br />
space. (Ian Thumwood)
DAVID SYLVIAN – MANAFON<br />
Label: Samadhisound<br />
Release Date: September 2009<br />
Tracklist: Small Metal Gods; The Rabb<strong>it</strong> Skinner; Random Acts of Senseless Violence;<br />
The Greatest Living Englishman; 125 Spheres; Snow Wh<strong>it</strong>e in Appalachia; Emily<br />
Dickinson; The Department of Dead Letters; Manafon<br />
Personnel: David Sylvian: vocals, gu<strong>it</strong>ar, electronics/ w<strong>it</strong>h collective personnel: Evan<br />
Parker: soprano and tenor sax; John Tilbury: piano; Marcio Mattos: cello; Joel Ryan:<br />
signal processing; Ke<strong>it</strong>h Rowe: gu<strong>it</strong>ar; Tetuzi Aakiyama: electric and acoustic gu<strong>it</strong>ar;<br />
Otomo Yoshihide: acoustic gu<strong>it</strong>ar, turntables; Toshimaru Nakamura: no-input mixer;<br />
Sachiko M: sine-wave sampler; Christian Fennesz: gu<strong>it</strong>ar, laptop; Burkard Stangl: gu<strong>it</strong>ar;<br />
Michael Moser: cello; Werner Dafeldecker; bass<br />
A problem I suspect many listeners will have w<strong>it</strong>h this record is<br />
that <strong>it</strong> does not fulfill the expectations aroused by <strong>it</strong>s fantastic<br />
international line-up of leading free improvisers, and Sylvian’s claim to<br />
have left their recordings untampered w<strong>it</strong>h. It is not a free improvisation<br />
album, but is a collection of songs – albe<strong>it</strong> w<strong>it</strong>h none of the rhythmic<br />
rigid<strong>it</strong>y or emotional superficial<strong>it</strong>y some might associate w<strong>it</strong>h the ‘pop<br />
song.’ What one has to accept is that the improvisations are there strictly
as background – in much the same way that Derek Bailey’s gu<strong>it</strong>ar<br />
enhanced the stark, spare, almost deadpan bleakness of Sylvian’s<br />
delivery on ‘Blemish’, often by not really seeming to do that much. In<br />
these backgrounds, atmospheres are created (appropriate to the<br />
darkness and shadows of the cover photograph, w<strong>it</strong>h <strong>it</strong>s similar<strong>it</strong>y to Von<br />
Trier’s ‘Antichrist’); essentially, the free improvisers are functioning as<br />
session musicians, creating a mood and texture which f<strong>it</strong>s the lyrics and<br />
delivery of the singer, the main focus. Of course, that’s complicated by<br />
the fact that the improvisations were recorded first, Sylvian overdubbing<br />
his voice and gu<strong>it</strong>ar at a later stage, and this might lead one to suspect<br />
that <strong>it</strong> was he who had to adapt to the instrumental ‘backgrounds’ – but,<br />
listening to the record, <strong>it</strong>’s clear that he does what he does in a manner<br />
not substantially changed from elsewhere. Nonetheless, he’s not out of<br />
sync w<strong>it</strong>h the improvisers, and is often in rather beautiful concordance<br />
w<strong>it</strong>h them: take the ending of ‘Snow Wh<strong>it</strong>e in Appalachia’, where the lyric<br />
“the radio falls silent but for short bursts of static” seems to comment on<br />
the music and the way <strong>it</strong> moves to an end –buzzing and crackling over<br />
faint fading, droning loops – just as much as on the story told by the<br />
song.<br />
Attention is primarily, then, on Sylvian’s voice and lyrics; repeating<br />
small melodic fragments, which are designed to f<strong>it</strong> the contour of the<br />
words in a manner approaching speak-singing (the ‘tunes’ aren’t exactly<br />
hummable), w<strong>it</strong>h occasional harmonized overdubs and faint reverbed<br />
echoes only serving to emphasize the unusual thinness of texture. The<br />
music never moves as such (perhaps that’s why <strong>it</strong> doesn’t really feel<br />
‘improvised’): melodies repeat, but not to indoctrinate us w<strong>it</strong>h their<br />
charms. Rather, as w<strong>it</strong>h Jandek, <strong>it</strong>’s always the words that one<br />
concentrates on, or thinks that one is concentrating on, the music oozing<br />
into consciousness less clearly, sneaking in by the back door.<br />
These words tread a line between poetry (on the most basic level –<br />
some of them rhyme) and prose; often flatly descriptive, they accumulate<br />
details in an unhurried, and often qu<strong>it</strong>e devastating manner. This is<br />
most often successful because <strong>it</strong> moves away from the ‘confessional’<br />
approach of the singer-songwr<strong>it</strong>er (the first-person is used only on the<br />
opening ‘Small Metal Gods’); and, if talking about others is still a way of<br />
talking about yourself (or the parts of yourself that you wouldn’t want to<br />
address directly), maybe that engenders a more honest, or at least a<br />
more interesting approach. At their best, Sylvian’s lyrics somehow<br />
manage to create (mostly) sympathetic characterization through distance<br />
and apparent detachment: stories stripped back to essentials, to<br />
observed details (the way the suicidal wr<strong>it</strong>er of ‘The Greatest Living<br />
Englishman’ refuses to meet one’s eyes, the chemical processes (drugs in<br />
the bloodstream) behind the actions of the woman in ‘Snow Wh<strong>it</strong>e in
Appalachia’). These stories are specific – they are about people in<br />
particularly circumstances and s<strong>it</strong>uations – yet, by refusing to name<br />
their characters (who are described simply as ‘he’ or ‘she’), they avoid<br />
being forced into a lim<strong>it</strong>ing contextualization (‘this song records this<br />
emotion at this time sparked by this event’). Perhaps this also allows the<br />
occasional, rather b<strong>it</strong>ing ironic edge to seem less cruel; the way Sylvian<br />
alludes to the melody of Lennon and McCartney’s ‘Yesterday’ throughout<br />
‘The Greatest Living Englishman’ is mockery in part, but mockery that<br />
arises from, or at least alongside, a keen and sorrowful sense of human<br />
weakness.<br />
In terms of the music, the free improvisers’ contributions only<br />
really stand out towards the end of the record; after Sylvian has finished<br />
‘Emily Dickinson’, his story of loneliness and isolation, Evan Parker’s<br />
soprano melodies, their flowing repet<strong>it</strong>ions and gliding melancholia<br />
flecked w<strong>it</strong>h broken, tongued notes, reach an overtly emotional climax<br />
never allowed in Sylvian’s near-deadened invocations of despair, distress<br />
and doubt. This slides into the only purely instrumental piece on the<br />
album, ‘The Department of Dead Letters’: again featuring Parker (though<br />
this time on tenor) and John Tilbury, along w<strong>it</strong>h Marcio Mattos on cello,<br />
<strong>it</strong>’s moody and subdued, and one does suspect that <strong>it</strong> was cut w<strong>it</strong>h<br />
Sylvian’s intentions in mind (<strong>it</strong>’s not clear exactly what instructions the<br />
improvisers were given beforehand, but their playing sounds somewhat<br />
more restrained than <strong>it</strong> might be in the completely free contexts in which<br />
they normally work). Still, for the free improv listener, this will probably<br />
be the most satisfying part of the album; and ‘Manafon’, the closing<br />
piece, is probably the disc’s highlight, moving slowly from the scrapes<br />
and hisses of a long instrumental opening into Sylvian’s portra<strong>it</strong> of the<br />
Welsh wr<strong>it</strong>er R.S. Thomas, who tries to alleviate his growing b<strong>it</strong>terness<br />
and frustration by “moving back in time,” a “physical essential”<br />
(‘essential’ in the sense that, the more he moves forward in time, the<br />
closer he reaches death; though, of course, ‘impossible’ as well, for<br />
moving back in time is a physical impossibil<strong>it</strong>y), and by dreaming of<br />
“moving west,” of raging in more than frustrated old age (“battles raged<br />
against the Furies that might see him at his best”). There’s a layer of<br />
irony, of the sardonic, through even Sylvian’s most apparently tender<br />
portra<strong>it</strong>s: the lines immediately following the description of Thomas’<br />
dreams for more meaningful struggle are those that end the song, and<br />
the album: “there’s a man down in the valley, don’t know his right foot<br />
from his left.” From the very strategies Thomas has employed to fight his<br />
demons, his mind disintegrates; failure to combat failure, failure on<br />
failure. It’s a bleak way to end what is a bleak record, one which creates<br />
an aura round <strong>it</strong>self, not of generalized melancholy, but of a sadness<br />
born out of empathy and out of a sometimes ironized frustration at<br />
wasted lives and inescapable cul-de-sacs. (DG)
GHEDALIA TAZARTÈS - REPAS FROID<br />
Label: t a n z p r o c e s z<br />
Release Date: 2009<br />
Tracklist: Twenty Unt<strong>it</strong>led Tracks<br />
Personnel: Ghédalia Tazartès: sounds<br />
While Ghédalia Tazartès’ media profile has increased slightly since<br />
I first came across his music a few years ago (for one thing, he has<br />
started to give public performances), there’s still more than a hint of the<br />
enigma about both man and music. F<strong>it</strong>tingly, then, the only information<br />
that comes w<strong>it</strong>h this CD is that <strong>it</strong> contains recordings selected from<br />
Tazartès’ ‘archives’; even the people who released ‘Repas Froid’ seem<br />
unsure as to <strong>it</strong>s exact origin.<br />
The shortness of these twenty unt<strong>it</strong>led tracks (even the longest,<br />
which lasts nine minutes, is actually a series of shorter pieces spliced<br />
together) intensifies the ramshackle, fragmentary feel of the disc; <strong>it</strong>’s as if<br />
we’re tuned into Tazartès’ brain, broadcasting on some strange frequency<br />
that’s been accidentally discovered by a battered-up, antique old radio.<br />
The effect is frequently funny and sometimes exhilarating, but <strong>it</strong> can also<br />
be disturbing, as demonstrated by the use of a recurring slamming door<br />
sample on the first few tracks, mixed variously w<strong>it</strong>h accordions, Tazartès’<br />
own arresting vocals, and fragments from what sound like a radio play.
It’s not just the door sample that re-appears on different tracks; certain<br />
samples come back again and again, tics repeated so that they turn into<br />
full-blown gurning grimaces. What sound like programmed beats also<br />
occasionally make their appearance, but as minor elements in the overall<br />
texture rather than as a driving force which the track can rest on – for<br />
beats would give a sense of solid<strong>it</strong>y and of forward momentum that<br />
Tazartès continuously avoids. Though this is a very busy disc – there’s a<br />
huge variety of different sounds and moods – <strong>it</strong>’s not busy in the service<br />
of a narrative (like a concept album), or even in an anecdotal sense.<br />
Rather, one becomes caught up in the rush, one’s ears adjusting, though<br />
never becoming completely accustomed to, the way the tracks work. (The<br />
reason that there’s no problem w<strong>it</strong>h lack of ‘cohesion’ is that the notion<br />
of ‘cohesion’ just doesn’t come into things.)<br />
I’m pretty sure that some of these sounds have appeared on other<br />
Tazartès records – I can imagine a roomful of reel-to-reel tapes from<br />
which he picks and chooses at will, dusting a few stacks off when<br />
someone suggests he makes a record. After all, <strong>it</strong>’s that home-made feel<br />
which makes his sonic creations so attractive – that, and the constant<br />
audac<strong>it</strong>y of his choices (on one piece, juxtaposing a young child’s voice<br />
w<strong>it</strong>h a chorus of birds, on another, building up layers of vocals w<strong>it</strong>h<br />
amplified recordings of cicadas to create a cross between a choral piece,<br />
noise music, and a warped field recording – before sw<strong>it</strong>ching direction<br />
once again). There’s not much point in me giving a further, more detailed<br />
breakdown of what happens on each track, because that’s not how<br />
listening to the disc works; <strong>it</strong>’s really something you have to discover for<br />
yourself. And so this review finishes w<strong>it</strong>h the recommendation that you<br />
seek out ‘Repas Froid’ and take a listen as soon as you can! (DG)<br />
THE THING – BAG IT!
Label: Smalltown Superjazz<br />
Release Date: June 2009<br />
Tracklisting: Hidegen Fujinaka Szelek; Drop the Gun; Bag It!; Snusvisan; Hot Doug;<br />
Mystery Song; Angels; BONUS DISCK: Beef Brisket (For Ruby’s)<br />
Personnel: Mats Gustafsson: saxophones, electronics; Ingebr<strong>it</strong> Haker Flaten: bass,<br />
electronics; Paale Nilssen-Love: drums<br />
Could there be such a thing as populist free jazz? (Well, if we<br />
ignore the fact that free jazz is or should be or could be the true ‘music of<br />
the people’, anyway...) The Thing provide a fine example of what <strong>it</strong> might<br />
be if <strong>it</strong> did exist– not blending skronk to mindless beats in order to add<br />
some superficial colour to the music, but being swept up on the energies<br />
of multiple genres to create a uniquely joyous, adrenaline-fuelled rush.<br />
‘Bag It!’ opens w<strong>it</strong>h a cover of ‘Hidegen Fujinaka Szelek’ by The Ex, given<br />
the sort of full-tilt, brutally rhythmic approach that characterized the<br />
group’s collaboration w<strong>it</strong>h Cato Salsa Experience and Joe McPhee,<br />
though w<strong>it</strong>h a determination and taut compactness that to me surpasses<br />
that of the earlier recording. This is very much groove-based free jazz:<br />
you could (in<strong>it</strong>ially) dance to ‘Drop the Gun’ (another cover, of a song by<br />
Japan’s 54 Nude Honeys), Gustafsson ’s bar<strong>it</strong>one in tandem w<strong>it</strong>h Haker<br />
Flaten giving a bass-heavy treatment to the melody, and some<br />
skronkingly noisy electronics pummeling waves of distorted feedback in a<br />
‘solo’ of sorts (more like a noisy smear) over unstoppable beats, before<br />
everything dissolves into the sound of bleeding electronics, shuddering<br />
and rumbling, blowing ear-spl<strong>it</strong>ting raspberries and letting out all kinds<br />
of machine grunts, Nilssen-Love still pummeling away like mad but only<br />
just making himself heard as a kind of metallic blinding sheen glinting<br />
from the crowded surface. For the last few minutes of this track, then,<br />
<strong>it</strong>’s hard to say whether we’re listening to ‘free jazz’ (where’s the<br />
instrumentation that’s become so enmeshed w<strong>it</strong>h that genre?) or to<br />
‘noise’ or to ‘free noise’, and <strong>it</strong> doesn’t matter because <strong>it</strong>’s a wonderful<br />
sound, propelling <strong>it</strong>self along in a manner that allows for the sort of loss<br />
of control that might seem lacking when, for instance, Gustafsson solos<br />
over a repet<strong>it</strong>ive bass riff on the t<strong>it</strong>le track. In any case, and in any<br />
context, <strong>it</strong>’s hard not to admire, or at least be swept along by the man’s<br />
playing –lifting his horn out of his mouth for vocal exhortations like those<br />
of Pharoah Sanders, crying out, quacking, screaming w<strong>it</strong>h a determined<br />
possession, rolling out rumbling riffs in the rasping low register of the<br />
bar<strong>it</strong>one.<br />
Of course, these qual<strong>it</strong>ies and tactics are always there in<br />
Gustafsson’s playing, but the electronics are a new and noteworthy<br />
element, and are integrated particularly well on ‘Hot Doug’, where a<br />
growling drone imbues the saxophone melody w<strong>it</strong>h a sense of terrible<br />
fragil<strong>it</strong>y, acoustic statement under the overwhelming threat of machine<br />
noise. But away from this, and away from the grooves and the free
lowing, there are some more overtly jazz-flavoured moments as well.<br />
Duke Ellington’s ‘Mystery Song,’ while not typically Ellingtonian in the<br />
slightest, finds Gustafsson blowing strong and assertively tender (his<br />
lines as ever drip w<strong>it</strong>h emotion, w<strong>it</strong>h unconcealed passion), Haker Flaten<br />
moving from fast and free walking bass to the buzzing repeated notes<br />
which, in tandem w<strong>it</strong>h Nilssen-Love, slowly take the track to <strong>it</strong>s<br />
diminuendo conclusion. Ayler’s ‘Angels’ is a more obvious choice, but<br />
given an equally surprising twist: a solo Gustafsson breathily intones the<br />
melody before Haker Flaten’s creeping electronics add an eerie sine wave,<br />
alongside assorted buzzes and squelches, w<strong>it</strong>h Nilssen-Love’s fragmented<br />
rustling and crashing getting louder and louder as the electronics come<br />
to dominate the texture. Perhaps the most intriguing track on the record,<br />
this could easily have gone two ways: an Ayleresque blow-out, or an<br />
electronic noise piece like the second half of ‘Drop the Gun.’ Both<br />
directions would have still ensured some fine music, but they would<br />
perhaps be too obvious, given the rest of the record and given The<br />
Thing’s reputation: thus, what we are presented w<strong>it</strong>h is something closer<br />
in spir<strong>it</strong> to the original Ayler piece, where Cal Cobb’s curiously neoclassical<br />
harpsichord added a kind of formalist ghostliness to Ayler’s<br />
intoning. The electronics never qu<strong>it</strong>e reach out to their full harshness,<br />
into the red of volume overdrive, but become dominant enough to<br />
become oddly unsettling, when contrasted w<strong>it</strong>h Gustafsson’s restrained<br />
yet utterly soulful playing. It’s proof that The Thing can maintain a<br />
delicate balance when they want; more proof is offered on the bonus<br />
track, a thirty-minute improv in which the usual pounding exhortations<br />
share space w<strong>it</strong>h a surprisingly subdued electronic ‘interlude’ and even<br />
quasi-Tibetan temple chimes and drones. One senses that the<br />
parameters are widening for a band who have, in any case, worked in<br />
many different contexts during their short history thus far; and, on the<br />
evidence of this album, that can only be a good thing. (DG)<br />
THE THING – NOW AND FOREVER<br />
Label: Smalltown Superjazz<br />
Release Date: 2007<br />
Tracklisting:<br />
DISC ONE (The Thing (2000)): Awake Nu; Nopti; Cherryco; Ode to Don; The Art of Steve<br />
Roney – Smilin’; Trans-Love Airways<br />
DISC TWO (SheKnows…(2001)): To Bring You My Love; The Thing; Baby Talk; Going<br />
Home; For Real; Old Eyes<br />
DISC THREE (Live at Oya (2005)): Art Star; The W<strong>it</strong>ch; Aluminum/Have Love Will<br />
Travel; No Crowd Surfing<br />
DISC FOUR (Gluttony (2007)): Gluttony<br />
Personnel: Mats Gustafsson: saxophones; Ingebr<strong>it</strong> Haker Flaten: bass; Paale Nilssen-<br />
Love: drums; w<strong>it</strong>h Joe McPhee (Disc 2) and Thurston Moore (Disc 3)<br />
Add<strong>it</strong>ional Information: 4-CD boxset. Disc 3 is a DVD.
A partial career retrospective so far for this fine trio, containing<br />
their first two albums, a DVD of a live performance featuring Thurston<br />
Moore, and an improv session from 2007 ent<strong>it</strong>led ‘Gluttony’ which<br />
receives <strong>it</strong>s only release as part of this set. The group have of course<br />
made several other albums, notably as a kind of punk jazz supergroup<br />
w<strong>it</strong>h Cato Salso Experience and Joe McPhee, but this is nonetheless a<br />
pretty good selection.<br />
First up, the debut recording: <strong>it</strong>’s hard to go wrong w<strong>it</strong>h a set of<br />
Don Cherry’s wonderful melodies, and the trio prove fully capable of<br />
turning them into some brawny free jazz workouts, Gustafsson powering<br />
away w<strong>it</strong>h a vocalised intens<strong>it</strong>y which, while <strong>it</strong> might be the norm for<br />
many free jazz players, is taken up just that extra notch, so one feels<br />
that he is doing more than just ‘doing the trick’, his style bursting from<br />
what have become an idiomatic hall-mark into a set of personalised and<br />
forcefully impressive aesthetics. Furthermore, rather than just going up<br />
there and doing his thing every time, Gustafsson has a real control and
abil<strong>it</strong>y to think through improvisational s<strong>it</strong>uations, and he knows when<br />
to let Cherry’s melodies simply sing out their simple pleasures w<strong>it</strong>hout<br />
overblowing and b<strong>it</strong>e. And this never feels like a forced jazz trio s<strong>it</strong>uation<br />
e<strong>it</strong>her, as <strong>it</strong> might have: tune and improvisation are umbilically linked, so<br />
that <strong>it</strong>’s not simply a case of playing the head and then blowing one’s<br />
head off. The album still feels fresh and worth repeated listenings nearly<br />
a decade on.<br />
The add<strong>it</strong>ion of Joe McPhee to the line-up broadens the texture<br />
and unleashes a humorous, anarchic streak w<strong>it</strong>hin the disciplined<br />
grooves and tight structures surrounding the group’s free blowing. At the<br />
same time, an influence from outside of jazz begins to be felt that is more<br />
pronounced than on the debut disc, w<strong>it</strong>h covers of a song by PJ Harvey<br />
and the trad<strong>it</strong>ional ‘Going Home’ paying tributes to pasts and futures, to<br />
tributaries leading both in and out of the history and trad<strong>it</strong>ions of jazz.<br />
Pieces by Don Cherry, James Blood Ulmer, Frank Lowe and McPhee<br />
himself round out what is an impressive selection of compos<strong>it</strong>ional<br />
material – and, interestingly, given that all but McPhee are Europeans,<br />
<strong>it</strong>’s one that emerges from a specifically American lineage, w<strong>it</strong>h <strong>it</strong>s roots<br />
in gut-bucket honking, blues wailing, and a rhythmic emphasis<br />
associated w<strong>it</strong>h dance, rather than the more abstract and spacious<br />
worlds of ‘European Free Improvisation’. Of course, such a distinction<br />
works on simplifying polar<strong>it</strong>ies: nonetheless, The Thing set out their stall<br />
very much as a free jazz group, embracing the wild and passionate spir<strong>it</strong><br />
that McPhee’s been demonstrating since the 70s.<br />
The third disc is a DVD documenting a live performance by the<br />
group, on a festival stage at Oya. From the brief crowd shots, <strong>it</strong>’s hard to<br />
tell whether the festival-goers are nonplussed or intrigued, though<br />
several can be seen smiling and jigging in admiration, and there’s warm<br />
applause at the end of the tunes. The most striking thing about the<br />
music is <strong>it</strong>s strongly rhythmic approach, down as much to Haker-Flaten<br />
and Gustafsson as to Nilssen-Love. Watching Flaten strike the strings,<br />
bending them double w<strong>it</strong>h the force of his fingers, or attacking them w<strong>it</strong>h<br />
some manic bowing, <strong>it</strong>’s clear that this is a man on a mission, and the<br />
firm riffs he throws out underneath Gustafsson’s screeching rhythmic<br />
patterns serve to anchor the music in a way that might have made <strong>it</strong><br />
more immediately accessible to the rock crowd (that, and the fact that<br />
the band cover tunes by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The Wh<strong>it</strong>e Stripes,<br />
though they transform them into l<strong>it</strong>tle Ayler-like song-fragments to the<br />
form the basis for improvisation rather than letting their music be<br />
warped too far from <strong>it</strong>s origins). Ironically enough, <strong>it</strong>’s when a genu-ine<br />
rock musician joins the band that things become more abstract and<br />
noisy, as Thurston Moore springs onstage for the final piece, a tenminute<br />
noise jam dominated by the feed-back howls and rumbles of his
electric gu<strong>it</strong>ar. In the face of such noise, even Gustafsson’s beefy<br />
saxophone finds <strong>it</strong> hard to compete; for much of the time, he’s restricted<br />
to blowing long, held multiphonics, and sometimes dropping out<br />
altogether. Flaten’s bass playing though, is absolutely ferocious, sawing<br />
away w<strong>it</strong>h the bow for the first few minutes and even introducing a few<br />
riff-like figures towards the end. ‘Live at Oya’ is not a particularly long<br />
set, by free jazz standards (the disc plays for just over 30 minutes), but<br />
<strong>it</strong>’s nice to see the physical dimension existing behind the sounds –<br />
something obvious from just listening to the albums, even more obvious<br />
w<strong>it</strong>h visual evidence.<br />
The most recent recording, ‘Gluttony’, departs from the rock-tune<br />
based approach in favour of a continuous forty-five minute free<br />
improvisation, though Gustafsson’s tendency to go flat out for the most<br />
‘direct’ (or obvious) manifestation of emotion means that the music often<br />
shares a similar heated temperature. Such emotionalism is, of course,<br />
part of a great free jazz trad<strong>it</strong>ion – from Ayler’s vibrato to Sander’s wideopen<br />
shriek – but, in fact, when Gustafsson tones down the bombast, the<br />
results are just as, if not more, compelling. The whole thing starts off as<br />
bar<strong>it</strong>one bleats are em<strong>it</strong>ted w<strong>it</strong>h a plosive, tongued edge. Building<br />
through repet<strong>it</strong>ion, Gustafsson storms into his patented throaty bar<strong>it</strong>one<br />
yell, hammering away at a single alternating figure and subsiding w<strong>it</strong>h <strong>it</strong><br />
before Haker-Flaten takes a fractured bass solo. Back in on alto,<br />
Gustafsson’s hardness here has an almost swooning qual<strong>it</strong>y to <strong>it</strong> as he<br />
bends his notes round in circling, swooping figures. Nilssen-Love giving<br />
his drumset a succession of vicious thwacks, intens<strong>it</strong>y ratchets: busy<br />
bass and drum scuttle, a hoarse alto desperation, w<strong>it</strong>h held multiphonics<br />
and even something of the delirious qual<strong>it</strong>y of Captain Beefheart’s shenai<br />
playing, trilling and fluttering w<strong>it</strong>hout the slightest hint of delicacy.<br />
Exhilarating propulsion, on the edge of total panicked overload. As more<br />
and more melodic phrases creep in, a dip and a drum solo, p<strong>it</strong>ter-patter<br />
cymbal-work keeping up a tinkling dance over the thuds and thwacks.<br />
Gustafsson honking away on bar<strong>it</strong>one: pop and slap of tongue and<br />
breath, sp<strong>it</strong>tle-fuelled. Minimal drums skirting round a pulse. Bass and<br />
bar<strong>it</strong>one playing notes that are growled and spattered, skewed, spat out<br />
and barfed, but w<strong>it</strong>h much held in check, in tension. Slow, held<br />
multiphonic and cautious gentle bass pluck, in the most hushed passage<br />
so far, pushing things to see how quiet they can go –less in your-face but<br />
perhaps even more intense than the full-blown free jazz sections because<br />
unexpected, because forcing concentration. Breath and scratch, creak<br />
and groan. Texture of bow on string, reverberant drag. Sudden cymbals,<br />
but no swing back to bombast – crashing punctuations of slide sax’s<br />
yearning yawn. The slide sax, sounding somewhere between a clarinet,<br />
flute and sax; a whimpering dog’s whine, then a throttled bird, voice<br />
rising high, strangled, out of <strong>it</strong>s throat; a human or an animal plea, the
tremor of uncertainty. As might be expected, the temperature rises again,<br />
and the concluding section of the disc is pedal-to-the-metal stuff; but <strong>it</strong>’s<br />
such moments as those described above that really make <strong>it</strong> for me, that<br />
really take things into a different space.<br />
Anyway, in sum, there’s plenty to sustain the interest over these<br />
four discs. It’s hard to believe that this group have been going for ten<br />
years now, and such freshness is testament to the consistent high<br />
qual<strong>it</strong>y of music they produce. For more evidence, look no further than<br />
their latest, ‘Bag It’, also reviewed in this issue. (DG)<br />
tusK – 10 GREATEST HITS!<br />
Label: Stomoxine Records<br />
Release Date: September 2009<br />
Tracklist: eject; rupture; malfunction; magma; splice; tectonic; repeat; static; explode; loop; drone<br />
Personnel: tusK (Stuart Chalmers): oscillator machine, circu<strong>it</strong> bent pedals, other electronics<br />
Add<strong>it</strong>ional Information: <strong>Download</strong> Release, available from http://stomoxinerecords.free.fr<br />
So where is Noise at today? An in<strong>it</strong>ially radical gesture, focussing<br />
exclusively on the ‘non-musical’ elements of music in the creation of<br />
extended sound experiences, <strong>it</strong> has now become, as the trend always<br />
goes, a marketable genre: previous extremes having reached dead ends,<br />
new directions branch off from the latest lim<strong>it</strong>s, before they, too, face<br />
assimilation. By ‘assimilation’ I don’t necessarily mean incorporation into<br />
the mainstream, but rather, the maintenance of the radical gesture as a<br />
kind of controlled ‘resistance’ to that mainstream. This creates a tension<br />
which, though very real, is also in some sense illusory, as <strong>it</strong> allows a<br />
modicum of conflict (which is, however, never going to mount a serious<br />
challenge) to spice things up a l<strong>it</strong>tle and keep things ticking over nicely<br />
just as they are. When the ‘fuck you’ gestures of the experimental side of<br />
rock music seemed to have reached the lim<strong>it</strong>s of assimilation, noise took<br />
things further out (further, even, than the screaming choir of horns on<br />
Coltrane’s ‘Ascension’ or the dense textures of Alan Silva’s ‘Luna<br />
Surface’, masses of sound forcing their way out of the speakers like the<br />
impasto oil paint hanging off a Frank Auerbach canvas, so layered and<br />
crusty that <strong>it</strong> could be called a kind of relief sculpture). Furthermore, <strong>it</strong><br />
could trace a her<strong>it</strong>age going back to Luigi Russolo and the Futurists’<br />
paradoxical embrace of modern<strong>it</strong>y, right through those moments in<br />
popular, classical and jazz musics in which instrumental textures had<br />
created dens<strong>it</strong>ies of sound in which individual lines or groups could no<br />
longer be distinguished.<br />
The packaging of ‘10 Greatest H<strong>it</strong>s’ suggests a parody of the pop<br />
music forms which noise music inherently resists (the slab of feedback<br />
which formed an ‘interlude’ on the original studio recording of My Bloody<br />
Valentine’s ‘You Made Me Realize’ became, in the band’s live
performances, something which completely overwhelmed the cursory<br />
‘song’ bookend, turning the feedback and noise of large-scale concert<br />
rock into a howling and total body experience). Yet one must ask: is this<br />
resistance now inherent? Bands such as Boris and Sunn O))) have<br />
tapped into another market (the avant-metal scene – and, through the<br />
work of Stephen O’ Malley, the art world), and harsh and gl<strong>it</strong>chy sounds<br />
which might previously have been heard as ‘errors’ are now part and<br />
parcel of much contemporary electronic dance music. While noise <strong>it</strong>self<br />
attracts a very defin<strong>it</strong>e and specific crowd (<strong>it</strong> remains very much caché<br />
music), the set of gestures, both musical and extra-musical, which have<br />
developed around and w<strong>it</strong>hin <strong>it</strong>, might have been said to have solidified<br />
so that <strong>it</strong> has lost <strong>it</strong>s dangerous edge. Of course, the same cr<strong>it</strong>icism could<br />
be levelled at any number of genres – free jazz and (acoustic) free<br />
improvisation – w<strong>it</strong>h debatable levels of accuracy.<br />
The primary ‘gesture’ I am thinking of is the role of rhythm. Given<br />
that noise is devoid of so much of the material that makes up ‘normal’<br />
music – melody, harmony, and even the particular kinds of texture and<br />
textural interaction which free improvisation can utilise – there tends to<br />
be a strong, compensating focus on rhythm, often blatant and loudly industrial<br />
in nature. Compared to the polyrhythms and free time of a<br />
Rashied Ali or Sunny Murray, in fact, noise’s rhythmic assault is relentlessly<br />
crude, a reduction to <strong>it</strong>s mechanised essence of the kind of popular<br />
music beat-making which Theodor Adorno famously compared to the<br />
sound of (fascist) marching. 1 In this sense, the rhythms of noise music<br />
function more as reflection than as resistance. They do not cover up the<br />
dark heart of modern society w<strong>it</strong>h veneers of manufactured joy and the<br />
illusory impression that individuals have the freedom to emotionally interpret<br />
and ‘make their own’ the pre-fabricated products of the culture<br />
industry’s pawns, but ne<strong>it</strong>her do they pos<strong>it</strong> an independent alternative.<br />
Instead, they const<strong>it</strong>ute a kind of truth-telling about how things are,<br />
about how existence and experience exist at this time – though they do<br />
not do this through explic<strong>it</strong> pol<strong>it</strong>ical content (Merzbow’s embrace of vegetarianism<br />
and ‘save the whales’ is not really a part of his music, even if<br />
the stickers which he plasters on his laptop are in such physical proxim<strong>it</strong>y<br />
to his sound-making device). Still, even if there is no explic<strong>it</strong><br />
‘message’, such an interpretation does come close to assigning Noise a<br />
ze<strong>it</strong>geisty, mimetic function; and, adm<strong>it</strong>tedly, this kind of mimesis also<br />
does come through in comments of Adorno’s such as “modern art is as<br />
abstract as the relations between people have in truth become,” 2 though<br />
1 “As the standardized meter of dance music and of marching suggests the coordinated battalions of a<br />
mechanical collectiv<strong>it</strong>y, obedience to this rhythm by overcoming the responding individuals leads them<br />
to conceive of themselves as agglutinized w<strong>it</strong>h the untold millions of the meek who must be similarly<br />
overcome. Thus do the obedient inher<strong>it</strong> the earth.” (Adorno, On Popular Music (available online at<br />
http://libcom.org/library/on-pop-music-theodor-adorno-george-simpson))<br />
2 Adorno, Aesthetic Theory
elsewhere he argues for a concentration on form, from which an artwork’s<br />
historical ‘truth-content’ can then emerge, semi-independently of<br />
the artist themselves (“the content of a work of art begins precisely where<br />
the author’s intention stops; the intention is extinguished in the content”<br />
3 ).<br />
Whether consciously or not, then, any Noise artist’s use of rhythm<br />
comes already bound up w<strong>it</strong>h a complex and paradoxical series of questions<br />
about the role of music and sound w<strong>it</strong>hin the structures of contemporary<br />
society – not as add-ons which impart the music w<strong>it</strong>h a pseudointellectual<br />
weight, but as questions fundamentally entangled w<strong>it</strong>h Noise,<br />
at the most level of the most basic practices and gestures which any<br />
Noise artist makes as soon as they begin to make Noise. And tusK (Stuart<br />
Chalmers) seems to be concerned w<strong>it</strong>h this rhythmic aspect of Noise<br />
more than most, whether as part of a conscious intellectual engagement<br />
w<strong>it</strong>h the issues outlined above, or as part of an engagement w<strong>it</strong>h the<br />
mechanics of Noise-making, as part of his improvisational discovery of<br />
means and methods, the very different process of creating rather than<br />
merely listening. As he puts <strong>it</strong> on his webs<strong>it</strong>e (http://www.myspace.com/<br />
tuskk): “material is allowed to move in which ever way the sounds or instrumentation<br />
determines.”<br />
That instrumentation consists of a couple of oscillators w<strong>it</strong>h various<br />
pedals and effects, and the format seems to be broadly w<strong>it</strong>hin that of<br />
the three-minute pop song (this could have been a conscious in<strong>it</strong>ial decision,<br />
made at the conceptual stage for the album, or <strong>it</strong> could simply<br />
have been what happened when performing). In any case <strong>it</strong>’s a good example<br />
of the way instrumentation completely changes ident<strong>it</strong>y – in contrast<br />
to Chalmer’s other solo project, Skarabee, where the various pedals<br />
and effects are applied to gentler sounding instruments such as the kalimba,<br />
here, the harshness and crud<strong>it</strong>y of the oscillators’ machine<br />
squelches, zaps and trilling, seemingly uncontrolled extreme p<strong>it</strong>ch oscillations<br />
means that textures must be much simpler. That said, the penultimate<br />
track, ‘Drone’, indicates that <strong>it</strong> is possible to create music more<br />
similar in mood to the ambient-oriented free improvisations of Skarabee:<br />
a repeating loop is underlain by wavering low drones and sprinkled w<strong>it</strong>h<br />
various quiet beeps, so that, most of the time, the texture consists of at<br />
least three layers. This puts in sharp contrast the starkness of the other<br />
tracks: often only one idea is followed at a time, perhaps a basic rhythm,<br />
to be joined by one other sound element before that section is discarded<br />
and a new one starts: a non-linear, non-developmental, blocky approach<br />
in which sound creation comes in discrete un<strong>it</strong>s. The format of short<br />
tracks is undoubtedly an important part of this, although <strong>it</strong>’s by no<br />
means certain whether track length dictates track construction, or construction<br />
dictates track length; in any case, one might usefully contrast<br />
3 Adorno, Notes to L<strong>it</strong>erature
this approach to the long-form explorations of, say, Merzbow (or of the<br />
noise sections of My Bloody Valentine’s live performances). What we have<br />
here is not so much a morass of sound in which one can become lost,<br />
disoriented, physically affected (though the persistent harshness of tones<br />
and the repet<strong>it</strong>ive rhythmic grind of the stripped-back approach const<strong>it</strong>ute<br />
their own kind of challenge). In that sense the potential for exhilaration<br />
and for a sense of liberation offered by the extreme experience of going<br />
to a Noise gig or of just listening to a Noise album is diminished;<br />
which may be a way of negotiating the problems of Noise’s diminishing<br />
radicalism. One-word t<strong>it</strong>les, three-minute tracks, brutally basic rhythms,<br />
deliberately restricted palettes of sound and texture: this is music that is<br />
simply there, not bludgeoning one into an experience of tortured ecstasy,<br />
making no real bones about <strong>it</strong>self, just existing as sound from the speakers.<br />
And that brutal lack of pretension (mixed w<strong>it</strong>h a subversive streak –<br />
those paying attention will note that there are 11 tracks on the album,<br />
desp<strong>it</strong>e the t<strong>it</strong>le) makes qu<strong>it</strong>e an impact. (DG)<br />
THE WHOLE VOYALD – IN REPOSE (EP)<br />
Label: Total Vermin<br />
Release Date: June 2009<br />
Tracklist: In Repose<br />
Personnel: Stuart Arnot: trumpet; Jon Collin, Tom Settle: gu<strong>it</strong>ars; Jon Marshall:<br />
harmonium; Paschal Nichols: drums. Recorded live in Sheffield, December 2008.
‘Voyald’ is a hybrid word coined by wr<strong>it</strong>er William Sarayon,<br />
combining the notions of ‘voyage’, ‘void’ and ‘world’, and one could apply<br />
this notion this band’s music, as they move into the known unknowns of<br />
a group improvisation where overall sound is more important than<br />
individual lines or melodic development. Slowly mutating improvised<br />
textures emerge imperceptibly from in<strong>it</strong>ial harmonium-based drones w<strong>it</strong>h<br />
an obvious legacy in 1960s/70s minimalism, and, indeed, jazz – the use<br />
of the harmonium’s hovering-cloud sound brings to mind Pharoah<br />
Sanders’ deployment of the instrument on Live at the East – but w<strong>it</strong>h a<br />
slightly harsh edge caused by the tendency of the two electric gu<strong>it</strong>ars to<br />
shade over into ringing distortion; this becomes more pronounced as<br />
volumes increase. The trajectory is not simply quiet to loud, or repose to<br />
disturbance and back; things rise and fall more freely than that. Thus,<br />
there’s more than one climax, the most prominent of which comes<br />
around ten minutes in, as Arnot’s trumpet takes on what sounds like an<br />
electronically-distorted tone, over joyfully ululating, high-p<strong>it</strong>ched doublegu<strong>it</strong>ar<br />
wail, and Nichol’s fervently-beating drums. The final six minutes<br />
of the piece consequently feel like a necessary, but in some ways rather<br />
overly-protracted coda. Still, at only eighteen minutes, this is one you<br />
might feel like playing again as soon as <strong>it</strong>’s finished, and then again after<br />
that. Lovely stuff. (DG)<br />
TONY WILSON SEXTET – THE PEOPLE LOOK LIKE FLOWERS AT LAST
Label: Drip Audio<br />
Release Date: 2009<br />
Tracklist: Lachrymae (Prelude; Movement #1; Movement # 2; Movement # 4; Movement<br />
# 4 Variation; Movement # 7; Movement # 7 Variation; Movement # 10; Movement # 11);<br />
Arpeggio; The People Look Like Flowers at Last; Let the Monkeys Dance; Variation on a<br />
Theme<br />
Personnel: Kevin Elaschuk: flugelhorn, trumpet; Dave Say: tenor and soprano saxes<br />
and flute; Peggy Lee: cello; Paul Blaney: double bass; Dylan van der Schyff: drums;<br />
Tony Wilson: gu<strong>it</strong>ar and harmonica<br />
The disc opens w<strong>it</strong>h a 9-part su<strong>it</strong>e feely adapted from Benjamin<br />
Br<strong>it</strong>ten’s melancholic piece for viola and strings, ‘Lachrymae’ – variations<br />
on variations, as the original piece is based on John Dowland’s ‘If My<br />
Complaints Could Passions Move.’ Something of the mood and melodic<br />
material of the Br<strong>it</strong>ten is sustained as a constant undercurrent to the<br />
music, which might otherwise seem to depart qu<strong>it</strong>e significantly from <strong>it</strong>,<br />
given <strong>it</strong>s modern-jazz flavoured language. The theme is stated most<br />
clearly in the first movement, played by Wilson on harmonica, which at<br />
first seems an odd decision – Br<strong>it</strong>ten filtered through ‘Midnight Cowboy?’<br />
– but turns out to add a slightly grating, ragged edge to the grave melody.<br />
Peggy Lee’s cello gives further appropriate somber undertones, and suddenly<br />
performs some unexpected yowling, high-p<strong>it</strong>ched scrapes half-way<br />
through for emotional emphasis, to add something extra to the mood of<br />
sober melodic contemplation, while not totally departing from <strong>it</strong>. The other<br />
variations generally hold the attention, though some of them rely too<br />
much on the kind of repet<strong>it</strong>ive, semi-groovy drum patterns which a lot of<br />
players in this kind of slightly left-of-centre jazz seem to prefer, and<br />
which distract from the rhythmic complex<strong>it</strong>y hinted at in the other instrumentalists’<br />
contributions. That said, the drums perform a fine crashing<br />
restlessness on the final piece, disturbing the hymn-like contours of<br />
Br<strong>it</strong>ten’s melody so that the final blissful cadences (w<strong>it</strong>h some lovely tenor<br />
sax swoops) feel almost perfunctory, incomplete, refusing total closure.<br />
The other compos<strong>it</strong>ions on the disc are all by Wilson (apart from<br />
the final variation on Bill Monroe’s ‘Working on a Building’), and their<br />
harmonic palette is generally richer than the ‘Lachrymae’ su<strong>it</strong>e. ‘Arpeggio’<br />
is edgy, Wilson’s clean gu<strong>it</strong>ar picking out the melody under a horn<br />
counter-melody and some fine solos. The t<strong>it</strong>le track has an attractive jazz<br />
ballad melody, complex but not overly tricksy; this material is first introduced<br />
by Wilson’s solo gu<strong>it</strong>ar, ruminating privately, before the rest of the<br />
band come in and add even more colour. There’s a nice, surprisingly<br />
Wayne Shorter style soprano solo (that’s Shorter in his softer, more pointilistic<br />
Weather Report days, rather than in the strident, declamatory<br />
mode in which he tends to play soprano w<strong>it</strong>h his current quartet), and<br />
the arrangement is intricate but flowing, melody restatements intersecting<br />
and entwining w<strong>it</strong>h solo lines in delicate, wispy dances. The final
track, variations on an old bluegrass staple, elic<strong>it</strong>s a more straightforward<br />
tenor solo, w<strong>it</strong>h smears and yelps to build crescendoing intens<strong>it</strong>y in<br />
Michael Brecker fashion; and while this may heighten the suspicion that<br />
the solos on the record tend to do no more than required – in other<br />
words, less than they could have – the disc as a whole is more about the<br />
skill of Wilson’s arrangements and compos<strong>it</strong>ions, and the pleasure elic<strong>it</strong>ed<br />
from the layers and combinations of the small group. It’s very<br />
pleasurable to listen to, w<strong>it</strong>hout being superficially attractive: there’s always<br />
something to listen out for, a textural richness that goes beyond<br />
surface impressions. Well worth seeking out. (DG)<br />
WOZZECK: ACT I<br />
Label: Clinical Archives<br />
Release Date: December 2007<br />
Tracklist: Act I<br />
Personnel: Ilia Belorukov alto saxophone, electronics; Mikhail Ershov bass-gu<strong>it</strong>ar;<br />
Pavel Mikheev drums<br />
Add<strong>it</strong>ional Information: Released as a free MP3 download at http://www.archive.org/<br />
details/ca087_w.
This was apparently Wozzeck’s first studio session, and as such <strong>it</strong><br />
ranks as a supremely assured debut. The group can w<strong>it</strong>h full confidence<br />
be described as a ‘power trio,’ electrified to the max, both in terms of<br />
instrumentation and the energy which courses through their<br />
performance. In add<strong>it</strong>ion, the forty-minute piece ent<strong>it</strong>led ‘Act I’<br />
demonstrates that they have a great sense of musical flow, their<br />
improvisation unfolding in a spontaneous succession of rising and falling<br />
waves of sound. Things open full-blast, Belorukov wailing over snarling<br />
electric bass and propulsive drums. W<strong>it</strong>h the introduction of electronic<br />
effects around ten minutes in, the textures become more dense, still<br />
throbbing w<strong>it</strong>h barely-contained, thrashing energy but less linear and<br />
developmental, more about a kind of vertical momentum. The effects<br />
build and build, as Belorukov first loops and multi-tracks himself on<br />
saxophone, then joins w<strong>it</strong>h Ershov’s bass to create a crescendo of<br />
feedback. From this super-intense climax of ear-testing noise, things<br />
gradually, inexorably slow down: a long, long descent until almost<br />
nothing remains of the energy unleashed at the start, Belorukov blowing<br />
lonely reverbed lines over the minimal taps and clicks of Mikheev’s<br />
drumk<strong>it</strong> and the almost imperceptible feedback drone of Ershov’s bass,<br />
in an achingly melancholic passage which comes across like the<br />
aftermath of the death of a star, the explosion of brightness followed by<br />
the dwindling to nothing.<br />
Comparisons will inev<strong>it</strong>ably arise w<strong>it</strong>h John Zorn’s Pain Killer or<br />
perhaps a gu<strong>it</strong>ar-less Last Ex<strong>it</strong>, and <strong>it</strong> may be true that Wozzeck are<br />
exploring similar areas: their music could be loosely described as free<br />
jazz w<strong>it</strong>h rhythmic sensibil<strong>it</strong>ies influenced by rock and punk. However,<br />
they have a sense of control and development which is very different to<br />
both those groups. Belorukov is capable of the same strident and roughhewn<br />
outbursts as Zorn and Brotzmann, but his use of electronics adds<br />
a totally different dimension; at times he disappears into the group<br />
texture, rather than – as often happens w<strong>it</strong>h forceful saxophone players<br />
in such contexts – being fore-grounded as the ‘leading man’. In add<strong>it</strong>ion,<br />
we might consider the desolation of the piece’s conclusion, which is as<br />
unexpected as <strong>it</strong> is naturally flowing from the preceding storms of noise.<br />
One might almost describe <strong>it</strong> as having an ambient edge, though <strong>it</strong>s<br />
emotional terrain is far more complex and, one might argue, arresting<br />
than much ambient work. Ershov and Mikheev, meanwhile, are prepared<br />
to go for things full-tilt, but also to vary their approaches so that they f<strong>it</strong><br />
w<strong>it</strong>h the afore-mentioned group sound (as in that final section, where<br />
punkish bass and drum momentum would be entirely inappropriate).<br />
This recording succeeds above all because Wozzeck manage the risks<br />
attendant on making this type of music, sacrificing ne<strong>it</strong>her emotional<br />
intens<strong>it</strong>y (to listen to this disc is, above all, to be taken on an emotional<br />
journey) nor a sense of structure and texture. ‘Act I’ is well worth seeking<br />
out. (DG)
ERI YAMAMOTO – DUOLOGUE<br />
Label: AUM Fidel<strong>it</strong>y<br />
Release Date: 2009<br />
Tracklist: Thank You; Conversation; Subway Song; Circular Movement; Violet Sky;<br />
Midtown Blues; Muse; You Are Welcome<br />
Personnel: Eri Yamamoto: piano/composer, in duo(logue) w<strong>it</strong>h Federico Ughi: drums<br />
(tracks 1 & 8); Daniel Carter: alto sax (track 2), tenor sax(track 5); William Parker: bass<br />
(tracks 3 & 7); Hamid Drake: frame drum (tracks 4 & 6)<br />
Eri Yamamoto’s appearance on CD is always welcome and, for my<br />
money, the Japanese pianist has emerged as one of the most interesting<br />
and rewarding exponents of her instrument over the last few years.<br />
The courteously named t<strong>it</strong>les of this set ares redolent of the<br />
amiable nature of this collection of duos w<strong>it</strong>h bassist William Parker,<br />
saxophonist Daniel Carter, drummer Federico Ughi and Hamid Drake<br />
working wonders w<strong>it</strong>h his frame drum. W<strong>it</strong>h so many of today’s piano<br />
players coming out of the Bill Evans/Ke<strong>it</strong>h Jarrett school, Yamamoto is<br />
becoming a distinct voice herself and there is a sense of authentic<strong>it</strong>y in
her playing which marks her out as someone capable of immediately<br />
grasping the mettle.<br />
Each guest is allotted two duos and the record is bookended by<br />
collaborations w<strong>it</strong>h Frederico Ughi. The opening track is called “Thank<br />
you” and sounds like <strong>it</strong> has strayed from William Parker’s “Luc’s<br />
Lantern,” the trio album where Yamamoto first came to the attention of<br />
most jazz fans. Previously unknown to me, Ughi doesn’t disappoint and<br />
there is clearly a significant degree of understanding between the pair on<br />
this march-like compos<strong>it</strong>ion. Typical of the whole of this disc, nothing is<br />
over-played and this very much comes across as a series of respectful<br />
discussions between close friends. On their second duet called “You are<br />
welcome”, Yamamoto almost tips her hat towards Les McCann w<strong>it</strong>h an<br />
immediately catchy theme underscored w<strong>it</strong>h the skipping brushwork.<br />
Whilst the pianist ploughs a pretty much free-ish approach to her<br />
improvisation, the music remains extremely accessible and this track will<br />
defin<strong>it</strong>ely get the toes tapping.<br />
The more typical improvised fair is provided in the duos w<strong>it</strong>h<br />
Daniel Carter who uses both alto and tenor saxophones. Of the two,<br />
“Violet Sky” recalls the ballads of John Coltrane – albe<strong>it</strong> Carter has a<br />
much lighter approach to his tone and rhythm. Fans of improvised music<br />
will also no doubt approve of the track where he sw<strong>it</strong>ches to alto<br />
(“Conversation”) which is easily the most abstract of all the recordings on<br />
this disc where the performances seem tailored to the optimum duration.<br />
As good as these two collaborations are, <strong>it</strong> is the work w<strong>it</strong>h her<br />
erstwhile employer William Carter and Hamid Drake where the level of<br />
creativ<strong>it</strong>y goes up several notches. “Subway Song” sounds like one of the<br />
Ellington riffs he used to so readily toss off and this track illustrates just<br />
how hard a swinging bassist Parker is. The bass lines take some odd<br />
twists and turns ensuring that this track is steered away from<br />
complacency and, if anything, contrive to push the pianist in some<br />
interesting terr<strong>it</strong>ory. This is a great duo and their next collaboration on<br />
the ballad “Muse” once more recalls their more hymnal work together on<br />
the “Luc’s Lantern” disc. There is no more beautiful track that this<br />
absolute gem on this record.<br />
The final set of duos sees Hamid Drake set aside his full drum k<strong>it</strong><br />
and get out his frame drum which he was so frequently demonstrated to<br />
be able to bring out a huge range of colour. Whilst “Circular Movement”<br />
brings out the exotic in the two musicians and demonstrates the almost<br />
incredulous possibil<strong>it</strong>ies that Drake coaxes out of this percussion<br />
instrument, the infectious “Midtown Blues” is the highlight of the disc.<br />
The theme is immediately memorable and once more Yamamoto recalls<br />
Duke Ellington, this time w<strong>it</strong>h a rocking rhythm not too dissimilar to one<br />
of his train inspired pieces. For four minutes and twenty-five seconds,
this track fizzes along and you can imagine the pure enjoyment they<br />
must have had playing this. This is one of those tracks that you feel the<br />
need to press the re-play button once <strong>it</strong> has finished.<br />
I must adm<strong>it</strong> that I love this unassuming record that manages to<br />
balance the adventurous w<strong>it</strong>h some great tunes. Throughout the history<br />
of jazz piano, there have been performers w<strong>it</strong>h an unerring abil<strong>it</strong>y to get<br />
to the n<strong>it</strong>ty-gr<strong>it</strong>ty from the off. Rather like a contemporary Mal Waldron<br />
in her style and approach, Eri Yamamoto deserves to be better known<br />
and “Duologue” offers an ideal recording to get acquainted w<strong>it</strong>h her work.<br />
Recommended. (Ian Thumwood)<br />
YXIMALLOO – UNPOP<br />
Label: ESP Disk<br />
Release Date: November 2008<br />
Tracklist: Peter Is Back; Linie Voezo; Lav, Success & Helth; Watabokkuri # 2; The<br />
Poete; Hamberged Angel; A Slice of Darkness; Any Sense; Slick Hands; Sex & Sushi #<br />
1; There Is A Mountain (Donovan); Puja; Samui Shibuja; Plowed Land; Trail; Qabala #<br />
1; Big Man; Person to Person; Full It Up; Art of War; Juju Lul; Men On Corner; Necro<br />
Man; Watabokkuri # 2<br />
Personnel: Yximalloo: Dell Lat<strong>it</strong>ude c 600; Chris Manz: Piano (track # 16)
According to Unpop’s liner notes Yximalloo has, since the early<br />
1980s, been the project of an unassuming Japanese man w<strong>it</strong>h a taste for<br />
The Beatles, Cliff Richard and 1920s Greek music. Whether this motley<br />
assortment can be considered ‘influences’ on the sound of Yximalloo is<br />
anyone’s guess – the music <strong>it</strong>self bears l<strong>it</strong>tle discernible relation to any of<br />
them (unless, of course, Cliff Richard released an album of gl<strong>it</strong>chy beats<br />
and electronic bleeps which somehow went unnoticed). The t<strong>it</strong>le of his<br />
1982 album ‘K<strong>it</strong>sch Shaman’ may give a slightly better idea of what’s on<br />
offer – tribal-esque quasi-dance rhythms made using all manner of<br />
trashy cheap-synth beats and sound effects. Still, one wouldn’t know<br />
that Yximalloo sounded like this from hearing the opening track, ‘Peter Is<br />
Back’, which is of a rather different character to the major<strong>it</strong>y of ‘Unpop’ –<br />
<strong>it</strong>’s something of a deconstructed blues song, w<strong>it</strong>h a fragment of a typical<br />
twelve-bar riff being alternated w<strong>it</strong>h synth-derived xylophone-like<br />
sounds, whilst childlike voices inform us, naturally, that ‘Peter’s Back’.<br />
After this seemingly false introduction we encounter Yximalloo<br />
proper, on a piece called ‘Linie Voezo’ – <strong>it</strong> opens w<strong>it</strong>h bizarre<br />
unaccompanied vocals straining out stilted phrases, before the entry of a<br />
rhythmic pattern made up of seemingly random, synthetic sounds –<br />
buzzes, scratches, whirrs and so on. Eventually the vocal line returns<br />
and <strong>it</strong> becomes apparent that the piece is a ‘song’, of sorts: <strong>it</strong> feels like a<br />
dance or pop track stripped of melody, harmony and the use of<br />
instruments in a conventional sense, so that we are left w<strong>it</strong>h only a<br />
skeletal beat and the incomprehensible intonations of the ‘k<strong>it</strong>sch<br />
shaman’. In that sense, ‘Peter Is Back’ was no false start – <strong>it</strong> simply<br />
demonstrated what may be the core principle of Yximalloo’s music:<br />
chopping up and stripping down the familiar (whether twelve-bar blues<br />
or pop songs or dance rhythms), thereby reducing the music to a core of<br />
roboticized, alien beats.<br />
At <strong>it</strong>’s most effective, Yximalloo’s approach shares something w<strong>it</strong>h<br />
other essentially amelodic, rhythm-dominated electronic music –<br />
Autechre, perhaps, or ‘electric’ Miles Davis - the rapid, shifting rhythms<br />
on ‘Necro Man’, for instance, recall the hyper-speed drum-machine<br />
bursts which occasionally enter on ‘Dark Magus’ (an album which,<br />
perhaps not coincidentally, was originally released only in Japan).<br />
Yximalloo’s gl<strong>it</strong>ch-dominated approach also has elements in common<br />
w<strong>it</strong>h the noise of fellow countrymen like Merzbow, except that Yximalloo<br />
isn’t concerned w<strong>it</strong>h noise for noise’s sake – rather, non-musical<br />
elements are employed to create identifiable (occasionally even<br />
danceable) rhythms that are characterised by repet<strong>it</strong>ion.<br />
Again, Yximalloo retains an audible connection to dance and pop<br />
music – something obvious in a track like ‘Any Sense’ which relies on a
simple pumping bass-snare pattern used in countless other electronic<br />
dance tracks. This can make for some fairly mindless and banal, even<br />
irr<strong>it</strong>ating, music – at several points over the course of ‘Unpop’’s 24 tracks<br />
(which total nearly 70 minutes) I felt as though I were being subjected to<br />
a series of indistinguishable variations on the same basic piece; the most<br />
memorable moments were those that broke totally from the Yximalloo<br />
sound - notably the sudden, unexpected appearance of Sun-Ra-esque<br />
jazz piano on ‘Trial’. There are, however, are a few standout tracks where<br />
the predominant rhythmic approach is put to more effective use, such as<br />
the aforementioned ‘Necro Man’, or the afro-futurist polyrhythms of ‘Big<br />
Man’, which reminded me of the start of ‘Rain Dance’ from Herbie<br />
Hancock’s ‘Sextant’.<br />
‘Unpop’, an album that, in general, suffers from being overlong,<br />
unvaried, and inconsistent, is thus not w<strong>it</strong>hout <strong>it</strong>s moments of interest.<br />
It would be intriguing to hear Yximalloo’s work from the early 1980s – if<br />
<strong>it</strong> sounds anything like this more recent offering <strong>it</strong> would surely have to<br />
be considered ‘ahead of <strong>it</strong>s time’, for whatever that’s worth. As <strong>it</strong> is, in<br />
2010 this approach is hardly new – though as far as pop (or rather<br />
‘unpop’) goes I’d take this over yet more 19 - - s (insert decade here)<br />
revivalism any day. (Daniel Larwood)<br />
RE-ISSUES<br />
RONNIE BOYKINS – THE WILL COME, IS NOW
Label: ESP Disk<br />
Release Date: 2009<br />
Tracklist: The Will Come, Is Now; Starlight at the Wonder Inn; Demon’s Dance; Dawn<br />
is Evening, Afternoon; Tipping on Heels; The Third I<br />
Personnel: Ronnie Boykins: bass & sousaphone; Joe Ferguson: soprano and tenor sax,<br />
flute; Monty Waters: alto and soprano sax; James Vass: alto and soprano sax, flute;<br />
Daoud Haroom: trombone; Art Lewis: drums, percussion; George Avaloz: congas<br />
Add<strong>it</strong>ional Information: Recorded 1975; engineered by Marzette Watts<br />
The only solo recording by Sun Ra bassist Ronnie Boykins, ‘The<br />
Will Come, Is Now’ has something in common w<strong>it</strong>h the ‘spir<strong>it</strong>ual’,<br />
Afrocentric jazz of the period, as well as harking back to earlier styles,<br />
and <strong>it</strong> demonstrates lessons learned from Ra, w<strong>it</strong>h a collective approach<br />
that sees all the musicians doubling on percussion and mixes tightlyarranged<br />
grooves and compos<strong>it</strong>ional material w<strong>it</strong>h plenty of space for<br />
individual soloing. The t<strong>it</strong>le track is a near-13-minute piece built around<br />
Boykins’ steady, percussion-complemented, groove. It’s followed by a<br />
ballad feature for his arco bass w<strong>it</strong>h a melody that comes very close to a<br />
Mingus tune; in sound, <strong>it</strong> harks back to late 50s and early 60s jazz,<br />
Boykins taking on the role of a saxophone soloist gliding over the<br />
swooning interjections of the horns, his deep and sonorous bowed tone<br />
imparting familiar-sounding melodic contours w<strong>it</strong>h a slow-paced<br />
elegance. The jovial melody of ‘Demon’s Dance’ gives way to a collective<br />
improvisation in which the horns pursue separate melodic lines,<br />
honking, shrilling, and spinning out intertwining be-bop licks. ‘Tipping<br />
on Heels’ opens w<strong>it</strong>h an unexpected burst of old-fashioned swing jazz,<br />
big-band style, and the collective solos that ensue have the joyous<br />
flavour of the improvised ensemble playing in classic New Orleans jazz,<br />
w<strong>it</strong>h brightly-p<strong>it</strong>ched soprano saxophones taking the place of trumpets<br />
and clarinets. A conga solo connects this w<strong>it</strong>h African roots. We might<br />
compare this approach to that of Archie Shepp on ‘Mama too Tight’ or to<br />
Mingus on numerous recordings: encompassing roots and futures in a<br />
historically-aware but living and flowing music.<br />
What’s most striking about ‘The Will Come, Is Now’, is the great<br />
attention paid to texture throughout: listen to the way Boykin’s bass<br />
vamp blends w<strong>it</strong>h the low-toned percussion on the opening track, giving<br />
the music a real low-end rhythmic force, or to the sparse and spooky<br />
opening of ‘Dawn is Evening, Afternoon’, w<strong>it</strong>h eerie conga moans timed to<br />
create just the right unsettling effect, and an alto melody imparted w<strong>it</strong>h<br />
an almost desperate fragil<strong>it</strong>y before a sudden sw<strong>it</strong>ch to invigorating uptempo<br />
soloing; listen to the way individual instruments emerge to solo<br />
over the dense, heavy percussion of ‘The Third I’, Boykins’ growling<br />
sousaphone contrasting w<strong>it</strong>h the more lilting high timbre of flute and the<br />
more piercing high timbre of soprano sax. If not a record of great<br />
surprises, ‘The Will Come, Is Now’, remains a very fine listen. (DG)
BOBBY BRADFORD WITH JOHN STEVENS & THE SPONTANEOUS<br />
MUSIC ENSEMBLE<br />
Label: Nessa<br />
Tracklist: CD One: His Majesty Louis; Bridget’s Mother; Room 408; Tolerance/To Bob;<br />
CD Two: Trane Ride/ Ornette-Ment/ Doo-Dee; Norway; Rhythm Piece; Fragment<br />
Personnel: Bobby Bradford: trumpet; Bob Norden: trombone; Trevor Watts: alto and<br />
soprano saxophone; Julie Tippetts: voice and gu<strong>it</strong>ar; Ron Herman: bass; John Stevens:<br />
drums, percussion and voice<br />
Not entirely a re-issue, as some of this double album has never<br />
been released in any format before. But notable all the same.<br />
Notable as a rare meeting between two musical worlds, remarkable<br />
in themselves, which were not in the hab<strong>it</strong> of meeting at the time of<br />
recording (1971). Bobby Bradford, a member of the rather neglected<br />
Californian contingent of the new thing, who played but did not record<br />
w<strong>it</strong>h Ornette Coleman in the early 1960s just after Don Cherry's<br />
departure, and John Stevens, later to be known for his ubiqu<strong>it</strong>ous and<br />
wide-ranging approaches to musics of all kinds from fusion w<strong>it</strong>h Away to<br />
the non-jazz, non-idiomatic free improvisations w<strong>it</strong>h Derek Bailey. But<br />
desp<strong>it</strong>e sharing a fair b<strong>it</strong> of common ground musically, at this stage there<br />
had been l<strong>it</strong>tle interaction between the U.S. 'avant-garde' and the diverse<br />
Br<strong>it</strong>ish improvising scene which had been growing since the mid 1960s.
The emphasis, as the listener might expect, is on interaction of<br />
what Evan Parker sometimes calls the 'close listening' kind. The opener<br />
is the track which has something most resembling a 'head' in the sense<br />
of a well-defined piece of thematic material played at the beginning and<br />
end of a piece, usually by the whole band. (Like the other tracks <strong>it</strong> is<br />
cred<strong>it</strong>ed to a composer.) But the improvisation is truly collective, which<br />
accentuates the Armstrong (New Orleans) connection, apart from the<br />
elegiac tribute from one trumpet player to another.<br />
The compos<strong>it</strong>ions may have nominal composers, but there is<br />
nowhere much evidence of the straight ahead foregrounding of a soloist<br />
playing lines or runs 'above' a rhythm section. A constant dialogue is in<br />
play, w<strong>it</strong>h musicians e<strong>it</strong>her 'agreeing' by following each other, as<br />
Bradford and Watts do for a while at the beginning of Trane ride, or by<br />
complementing each other less dependently, as in Tolerance, where long,<br />
keening notes from horns and voice are juxtaposed w<strong>it</strong>h a stop-time<br />
section from bass and drums. Motifs are developed collectively almost<br />
like a 'pass' in some ball game; pace, momentum, dynamics, dens<strong>it</strong>y are<br />
all varied so that <strong>it</strong> is as far removed as possible from the 'power' kind of<br />
free jazz on one hand, and drifting space music on the other, but does<br />
achieve a compos<strong>it</strong>ional kind of expressive continuum.<br />
There is plenty of give and take, toing and froing to such an extent<br />
that all the musicians do not play on every track. Rhythm piece is almost<br />
entirely voice, bass and drums, Bridget's mother is all horns and voice.<br />
This last number, plus Norway, which is w<strong>it</strong>hout drums and trombone,<br />
seem to stem from Stevens' workshop exercise known as 'drones', where<br />
all concerned concentrated on sustaining notes as long as possible, while<br />
Rhythm piece bears some relation to the exercise known as 'pips' where<br />
the shortest possible notes are played. Special mention should be made<br />
of Julie Tippetts' role, not just as a vocalist who uses the voice<br />
instrumentally, at which she compares favourably to her contemporaries,<br />
Maggie Nicols and Norma Winstone, but at the way her voice is on equal<br />
terms w<strong>it</strong>h the horns, reacting and helping to shape the music's<br />
development. There is a particularly seamless blend of voice and horns<br />
on Norway, where <strong>it</strong> is almost impossible to tell them apart.<br />
Bradford recorded again w<strong>it</strong>h Stevens and Watts two years later in<br />
the company of Kent Carter. The results can heard on Love's dream<br />
(Emanem), music deserving close attention.<br />
Martin Davidson should be thanked for making so much of SME's<br />
music available on his Emanem label. The album reviewed here may not<br />
be qu<strong>it</strong>e so radical as Frameworks or Quintessence, but w<strong>it</strong>h Oliv,<br />
Karyobin and other albums reaching the 'hen's teeth' category of rar<strong>it</strong>y, <strong>it</strong><br />
is a valuable and engaging add<strong>it</strong>ion to the readily available SME<br />
discography. (Sandy Kindness)
BYARD LANCASTER – PERSONAL TESTIMONY<br />
Label: Porter Records<br />
Release Date: 2009<br />
Tracklist: (Then – 1979) Miss Nikki; In Lovingkindness; Dogtown; Hoodoo; Brotherman;<br />
What A Friend We Have in Jesus; Marianne and Alicia; Brian; Mind Exercise/ (Now –<br />
2007) Prayer Cry; Tribalize Lancaster; Afro-Ville; Free Mumia; Global Key; Loving You<br />
Personnel: Byard Lancaster: voice, piano, flute, piccolo, bass clarinet, soprano & alto<br />
sax, percussion<br />
Add<strong>it</strong>ional Information: Tracks 1-9 released as ‘Personal Testimony’ on Lancaster’s<br />
Concert Artists record label in 1979. Tracks 10-15 are new pieces recorded by<br />
Lancaster especially for this re-issue (ent<strong>it</strong>led 'Personal Testimony: Then & Now').<br />
Having released a very fine group recording by the Byard Lancaster<br />
Un<strong>it</strong> (‘Live at Macalester College’, reviewed in Issue 2 of ‘eartrip’), Porter<br />
Records have now decided to re-issue a solo recording in which<br />
Lancaster, best known as an alto sax player, demonstrates his<br />
capabil<strong>it</strong>ies on a wide variety of instruments. ‘Personal Testimony’, the<br />
original nine-track album, is supplemented on this issue by five new<br />
recordings from 2007 – not qu<strong>it</strong>e enough material to make an entire new<br />
album, but a significant add<strong>it</strong>ion nonetheless. The 1979 recordings<br />
feature Lancaster on saxophone, bass clarinet and flute; the newer<br />
recordings are mainly Lancaster on flute, piano and various b<strong>it</strong>s of<br />
percussion, w<strong>it</strong>h the occasional use of voices as well. Most of the tracks<br />
are dedicated to various people and places of personal significance to<br />
Lancaster: one of the new pieces is for Mumia Abu-Jamal, and there are<br />
songs for family, loved ones, and for the commun<strong>it</strong>y – Lancaster, a<br />
commun<strong>it</strong>y activist, has done much to bring jazz music to Philadelphia.
On ‘Exactemente’, a 1974 release w<strong>it</strong>h percussionist Keno Speller,<br />
Lancaster plays a very fine piano solo, full of rhapsodic scales and<br />
chords, and ‘Miss Nikki’ has a similar vibe, w<strong>it</strong>h overdubbed sung and<br />
whispered vocals adding just the hint of R&B ballad. ‘In Lovingkindess’<br />
has the gentle feel of Lancaster’s compos<strong>it</strong>ion ‘Last Summer’ (featured on<br />
both the Macalester recording and what is probably Lancaster’s bestknown<br />
album, ‘It’s Not Up To Us’, featuring gu<strong>it</strong>arist Sonny Sharrock).<br />
Reverberant flutes hover, melodically intertwine, and swoop up to high,<br />
tongued exclamations. The flute and piccolo of ‘Dogtown’ are more<br />
strident, building shrill eddies and cascades of sound from the funky<br />
melodic line. ‘Hoodoo’, for soprano sax, is the first track not to featured<br />
overdubbing; <strong>it</strong> has a gospel flavour, combining a laid back, lazyafternoon<br />
feel w<strong>it</strong>h a quietly passionate melodicism. ‘Brotherman’ mines<br />
the rich textural combination of overdubbed bass clarinets: breathy and<br />
sinuous, they pursue simple scalar patterns which hover around long,<br />
held tones. As more active improvised lines start to emerge, the piece<br />
loses none of <strong>it</strong>s warm, hazy qual<strong>it</strong>y. The gospel tinge heard on ‘Hoodoo’<br />
emerges fully on a straight alto rend<strong>it</strong>ion of ‘What a Friend We Have in<br />
Jesus’. Rather than the Ayler-like vibrato one might expect, what<br />
emerges is much more metallic in sound, though w<strong>it</strong>h a certain softness<br />
in tone as the notes die away.<br />
‘Marianne and Alicia’ emerges seamlessly from the last silence in<br />
the previous piece as alto and soprano intertwine around another<br />
supremely relaxed melody, w<strong>it</strong>h some vocalised tones and fast fingerwork<br />
on soprano contrasting w<strong>it</strong>h the alto’s continued declamations of the<br />
theme. ‘Brian’ is an alto piece showing Lancaster’s be-bop roots – not<br />
something you hear that much in his work, as he tended to be<br />
stereotyped as a free jazz player – while ‘Mind Exercise’, the original<br />
closing track of the album, hints at some sort of futuristic bent w<strong>it</strong>h the<br />
subt<strong>it</strong>le ‘Complicated Planning 2030’, and is an upper-register exercise in<br />
the vein of someone like Roscoe M<strong>it</strong>chell. As Michael Cuscuna wr<strong>it</strong>es in<br />
his liner notes, players like M<strong>it</strong>chell and Anthony Braxton, in their solo<br />
rec<strong>it</strong>als, were taking the idea of the exercise, the study, focussing on a<br />
particular range or particular aspect of technique – such as the upper<br />
register – and transforming <strong>it</strong> into the basis of the whole piece. Such a<br />
comm<strong>it</strong>ment to technique was never, whatever <strong>it</strong>s detractors might say,<br />
w<strong>it</strong>hout ‘soul’, and <strong>it</strong>’s this sense of unfussy sincer<strong>it</strong>y which marks out<br />
Lancaster’s playing on all the original ‘Personal Testimony’ tracks.<br />
So to the 2007 recording: ‘Prayer Cry, which is predominantly<br />
vocal, has a joyous, South-African flavour, as Lancaster alternates<br />
between loud screams and declamations and barely-audible whisperings<br />
and mutterings. The piece concludes w<strong>it</strong>h Lancaster blowing melodic<br />
counterpoint on flute to a tape of a trad<strong>it</strong>ional African performance.
‘Tribalize Lancaster’ continues the feel w<strong>it</strong>h melodic flute over softly<br />
pattering percussion. Desp<strong>it</strong>e the up-tempo emphasis, the feel of almost<br />
spaced-out calm that suffuses the 1979 recordings is also present here,<br />
as Lancaster’s languid spoken vocals drift over overdubbed flutes on<br />
‘Afro-Ville’ and the perkier ‘Free Mumia.’ ‘Global Key’ – which, at about<br />
seven minutes long, is the longest of the new pieces – is built around<br />
rippling piano textures, w<strong>it</strong>h a dreamy feel induced by assorted<br />
interjections from flutes, voice and percussion and thumb piano. A<br />
rumbling, more dissonant central section flows back into a calm<br />
conclusion. ‘Loving You’, w<strong>it</strong>h Lancaster picking out chords under his<br />
own flute melodies, and singing softly, almost to himself, provides a<br />
mellow conclusion. While the 1979 date overall has more variety, there’s<br />
something nicely personal about the later tracks, the spoken and sung<br />
portions giving the impression that what are clearly carefully thoughthrough<br />
performances have been tossed off in a quiet hour, drifting out<br />
of an open window on a mellow afternoon. Fans of Lancaster’s work, and<br />
those seeking an accessible, varied solo recording, should certainly enjoy<br />
this release. (DG)<br />
THE REVOLUTIONARY ENSEMBLE –VIETNAM
Label: ESP-Disk<br />
Release Date: 2009<br />
Tracklist: Vietnam 1; Vietnam 2<br />
Personnel: Jerome Cooper: percussion; Sirone: bass; Leroy Jenkins: violin<br />
Add<strong>it</strong>ional Information: Recorded at the peace church. Originally released 1972.<br />
A re-issue of the first recording by this superlative group, whose<br />
‘avant-chamber-jazz’ approach seemed something of a rar<strong>it</strong>y at the time,<br />
and still does so today, given the dominance of much more forceful instrumental<br />
line-ups (saxophone, trumpet, rhythm section, etc). In terms<br />
of small group work, you’d have to go back to the early 1960s trio of Paul<br />
Bley, Jimmy Giuffre and Steve Swallow for something comparable, and<br />
the Revolutionary Ensemble’s music is very different to the crisp pointillism<br />
of that trio. Indeed, the term ‘chamber jazz’ may be somewhat misleading,<br />
suggesting a constraint which his nowhere present in the music<br />
<strong>it</strong>self; qu<strong>it</strong>e the contrary, in fact, for the inventive sweep of this performance<br />
in no way feels formal or staged. One might even argue that the one<br />
lengthy piece presented (spl<strong>it</strong> into two tracks for the LP release) is somewhat<br />
episodic. At least, one might argue that in theory; in practice,<br />
trans<strong>it</strong>ions are seamless and there’s a total avoidance of the ‘sawtooth’<br />
model of improvisation (rise to loud climax, subside, then rise again).<br />
Things vary from the variations-on-a-theme which opens the disc, to the<br />
lengthy mid-section, where the employment of long silences, punctuated<br />
by a distant harmonica, s<strong>it</strong>s eerily against the loud, droning buzz which<br />
evidences imperfect recording qual<strong>it</strong>y (but which ends up forming another<br />
component to the music, in a serendip<strong>it</strong>ous mesh). The music frequently<br />
stops as individual members of the group take solos, in which<br />
the focus becomes even more intense, moves to another level of concentration.<br />
Particularly at these moments, there’s a real sense of being<br />
drawn into a sound world that matters, a necessary and wholly beguiling<br />
place.<br />
Jenkins, as ever, plays the most exquis<strong>it</strong>ely shaped lines w<strong>it</strong>h an<br />
ease and grace which belies the speed of thought required for such manoeuvres.<br />
Sirone, avoiding the temptations of walking bass or too much<br />
woody pizzicato, is just as happy forming a twin melodic strain to Jenkins’<br />
violin as he is falling into an accompanying role, or varying the texture<br />
by repeating a particularly notable phrase. Cooper’s drumming is so<br />
subtle that <strong>it</strong>’s to forget just how hard <strong>it</strong> must be to play alongside two<br />
stringed instruments; and, in a music that’s as often about melodic flow<br />
as <strong>it</strong> is about the sort of propulsion normally associated w<strong>it</strong>h free jazz, he<br />
has the rhythmic subtlety and the instinctive understanding to contribute<br />
something to the texture w<strong>it</strong>hout dominating <strong>it</strong> and w<strong>it</strong>hout destroying<br />
the mood. And <strong>it</strong>’s a mood (or series of moods) that’s sustained<br />
throughout the album. Well worth hearing. (DG)
CHARLES TYLER – CHARLES TYLER ENSEMBLE<br />
Label: ESP-Disk<br />
Release Date: 2009<br />
Tracklist: Strange Uhuru; Lacy’s Out East; Three Spir<strong>it</strong>s; Black Mysticism<br />
Personnel: Charles Tyler: alto sax; Joel Friedman: cello; Charles Moffett:<br />
orchestra vibes (track 1); Henry Grimes: bass; Ronald (Shannon) Jackson: drums<br />
Add<strong>it</strong>ional Information: Originally released 1966.<br />
Charles Tyler, best known as a bar<strong>it</strong>one player, displays a strikingly<br />
forceful alto tone on this, his debut album. Granted, this kind of<br />
free jazz setting is one where ‘forceful tone’ is par for the course, yet <strong>it</strong><br />
seems to me that Tyler really does take things outer than out, to Aylerlike<br />
levels of vibrato-heavy intens<strong>it</strong>y and scalding multiphonic shrieks,<br />
fully justifying Leroi Jones’ comment, around the time, that “only<br />
Charles Tyler of the Ayler un<strong>it</strong> has the big wailing heavy alto sound that<br />
satisfies my particular need for flesh and blood.”<br />
In fact, Tyler doesn’t play as much as might be expected, tending<br />
to state the melody and take a brief solo before leaving space for Joel<br />
Friedman, the other most dominant voice in the band, around whose
cello lines weave Charles Moffett’s tinkling ‘orchestra vibes’ (sounding<br />
oddly and eerily child-like in such an avant context) and Henry Grimes’<br />
typically active bass. The combination of cello and bass is an interesting<br />
one, also to be found on the one date Gato Barbieri cut for ESP, ‘In<br />
Search of the Mystery’ (also recently re-issued by the label), where Sirone<br />
and Calo Scott are the musicians in question. This album is perhaps less<br />
claustrophobic than the Barbieri, less rhythmically static and less focussed<br />
on melodic improvisation – even when Friedman suggests folktinged<br />
modes w<strong>it</strong>h an Eastern European or Jewish flavour, Moffett’s always<br />
prodding him onwards w<strong>it</strong>h sparkling fast runs. Thus, though<br />
sometimes the cello sounds like <strong>it</strong>’s on the verge of smooth lyricism, the<br />
other musicians don’t allow that to happen, pushing Friedman on instead<br />
to rough rhythmic scrapes and woozy slides around the instrument’s<br />
high register. That said, Tyler’s keening improvisation over arco<br />
strings when he re-enters the opening piece, ‘Strange Uhuru’, is far from<br />
orthodox ‘fire music’. Much 60s free jazz abolished, or at least complicated,<br />
the sense of linear time engendered by the theme-solos-theme<br />
format of trad<strong>it</strong>ional jazz, often by speeding up the pulse to sustain a<br />
whirling, trance-like atmosphere, and Tyler does employ this approach at<br />
times, but, as on the aforementioned passage in ‘Strange Uhuru’, his ensemble<br />
is also capable of slowing almost to a stop: a different kind of<br />
suspension, w<strong>it</strong>h a much more mysterious and muted atmosphere. In<br />
large part this is due to Ronald Shannon Jackson (who’d played alongside<br />
Tyler in Albert Ayler’s band) demonstrating a particularly sharp<br />
sense of his role in relation to the other group members, sometimes<br />
dropping out altogether, in order to allow the full colouristic implications<br />
of the unusual instrumental line-up to assert themselves. Of course, this<br />
being an ESP Disk, he does he whip up plenty of j<strong>it</strong>tering energy elsewhere<br />
– on the final track in particular, where Tyler really gets the<br />
chance to wail, playing super-fast runs and honk-tonguing clarion call<br />
after clarion call in a vicious, buzzing lower register. This is a fine recording<br />
all round. (DG)
BOOK REVIEWS<br />
RICHARD WILLIAMS – THE BLUE MOMENT: MILES DAVIS’ KIND OF<br />
BLUE AND THE REMAKING OF MODERN MUSIC<br />
Publisher: Faber and Faber<br />
Publication Date: 2009<br />
Number of Pages: 309 (incl. index)
Contents: Introduction; Into the Blue; The Sound of Blue; Blue Moods; Blue Dawn; Six<br />
Colours (Blue); Interlude: Outside in Blue; The Blue Moment; Blue Waves; Blue<br />
Horizon; Dark Blue; So Blue; Blue Bells; Code Blue; Blue on Blue; Coda: Permanent<br />
Blue; References; Acknowledgments; Index<br />
So here we have yet another book on Miles Davis, and one which<br />
deals, furthermore, w<strong>it</strong>h the album forced to bear the weight of the<br />
history of an entire music (and, by association, all of <strong>it</strong>s dependent and<br />
shaping contexts) – a task for which no one album is su<strong>it</strong>ed. But Richard<br />
Williams promises something different: an attempt to analyse just what <strong>it</strong><br />
was about ‘Kind of Blue’ that made such an impact, and how this was<br />
impact was felt among listeners and among other musicians, rather than<br />
simply another case of reinforcing <strong>it</strong>s mystique as a ‘great’ art object, as<br />
a fifty-year old talisman overshadowing all which comes after.<br />
That said, about half the book is a history of Davis’ career in the<br />
years leading up to and including ‘Blue’; something Ashley Kahn’s book<br />
of a few years ago had already done, as Williams acknowledges in his<br />
introduction. Once we get past the description of the actual album <strong>it</strong>self,<br />
and the recording circumstances surrounding <strong>it</strong>, Williams seems to feel<br />
liberated into the more broadly contextual element which is, at least<br />
partly, the book’s raison d’etre, and proceeds to digress into a more<br />
sweeping survey of 1960s drone-influenced music (the minimalism of<br />
Young, Riley, Reich and <strong>it</strong>s incursion into the rock music world via the<br />
Velvet Underground). This would seem to relate more to Davis’ similarly<br />
Indian-influenced late 60s and early 70s work (‘In a Silent Way’, ‘Orange<br />
Lady’ and ‘He Loved Him Madly’) rather than to ‘Blue’ – though of course<br />
Davis had had at least some influence in terms of the modal music<br />
freedom and the impressionist atmosphere of the introduction to ‘So<br />
What’.<br />
The problem here is making any one album a template, a<br />
talismanic object, when actually, for the players, <strong>it</strong> was just another<br />
recording session. This is part of a tendency to make the music static, to<br />
make <strong>it</strong> live on in a series of marketable artefacts rather than to develop<br />
and grow in a live, organic context, and is particularly ironic given Davis’<br />
refusal ever to stand still in his career, and given the fact that Williams is<br />
trying to chart a series of changes and developments sparked by the<br />
in<strong>it</strong>ial album. Perhaps, though, Williams is simply wr<strong>it</strong>ing the way that<br />
many listeners actually do and did experience music such as Davis’;<br />
those who have missed catching the live act through a combination of<br />
money and circumstance. Indeed, he notes that “creative musicians are<br />
often justifiably suspicious of the way their listeners invest emotional<br />
cap<strong>it</strong>al in specific recordings…From such an instinctive affection can<br />
come the urge to force an artist to stop, to freeze his or her work at a<br />
certain time, the time best su<strong>it</strong>ed to our own needs. The artist, moving
on, does not necessarily see <strong>it</strong> that way.” But if, then, this book is an<br />
attempt to capture something of the actual listening experience, rather<br />
than existing simply as an ‘objective’, detached chronicle or history of<br />
what happened in 1959 and after, <strong>it</strong> falls short on topics which could<br />
easily have been discussed, surrounding the commercial aspects of<br />
modern musical production and consumption and the economic and<br />
pol<strong>it</strong>ical circumstances so v<strong>it</strong>ally a part of the ‘jazz music’ of which ‘Kind<br />
of Blue’ is taken to be the supreme representative.<br />
A chapter, tellingly described as ‘Interlude’, in which Williams<br />
briefly treats of the existentialist/cool outsider milieu of the 1950s<br />
(Camus, Moravia, Mastroianni and Strand cigarettes), is on the right<br />
track, but seems rather unfocussed, a journalist’s collection of<br />
quotations and generalising statements. Which is why the book is best<br />
when Williams simply describes the music – he’s a cr<strong>it</strong>ic w<strong>it</strong>h a fine prose<br />
style, even if his use of the buzz-words ‘truth’ and ‘beauty’ too often goes<br />
unchecked – or collects revealing quotations from, in particular, Brian<br />
Eno and Terry Riley.<br />
I think perhaps the problem is that, too often, he seems<br />
uncomfortable w<strong>it</strong>h thematic or theoretical analysis (by the latter, I don’t<br />
mean a narrowly musicological approach, but one which is willing to<br />
address the ‘wider issues’ relating to the music w<strong>it</strong>h more than token or<br />
sweeping gestures). Thus, we are presented w<strong>it</strong>h tantalising hints at<br />
areas which almost open up into more extended investigation, but which<br />
then sink back again as chronology takes over. For instance, the<br />
oppos<strong>it</strong>ion between the expression of ‘innerness’ and of a more collective<br />
spir<strong>it</strong>: here, Williams turns in a nice description of Coltrane’s soloing as<br />
the “public expression of an inner quest,” but goes no further. Or,<br />
another oppos<strong>it</strong>ion, between ‘hot’ and ‘cool’ approaches to jazz (though in<br />
some ways this was falsely set up: Davis, so often taken as the supreme<br />
‘cool’, mid-register trumpeter, began to increasingly utilise a fierce, brash<br />
upper-register approach as the 60s wore on; ‘introspective’ Bill Evans<br />
turns in a particularly energetic performance on George Russell’s<br />
‘Concerto for the Billy the Kid’; and even Stan Getz could be more than<br />
mellow.) And, perhaps connected to this, the oppos<strong>it</strong>ion between African<br />
and European approaches (the legacy of which becomes increasingly<br />
apparent in the ideological debates over the ‘New Thing’, or one’s cr<strong>it</strong>ic<br />
injunction to Anthony Braxton: “stop Messiaen around”). W<strong>it</strong>ness<br />
Coltrane’s presence on ‘Kind of Blue’: one solo was described as “angry”’<br />
in a Down Beat review (which Williams quotes in full), and this perhaps<br />
because <strong>it</strong> did not conform to a notion of western ‘elegance’, of ‘fine<br />
craftsmanship’ and clear structure (whereas Davis’ p<strong>it</strong>hiness and strong<br />
melodicism leant <strong>it</strong>self much more obviously to that model). Indeed, as<br />
Coltrane’s playing developed, non-western influences became
increasingly apparent, whether these be African (the rhythmic propulsion<br />
and emotive, non-standard instrumental cries on ‘Africa,’ from the<br />
‘Africa-Brass’ sessions), or Indian (both in terms of timbre, instrumental<br />
colour, and raga-like length). And we musn’t forget Davis’ later, more<br />
formally adventurous and ‘aggressive’-sounding 1970s work, where<br />
James Brown (Africa, via the USA) met India (s<strong>it</strong>ars, tables), drum choirs<br />
(see Ian Carr’s analysis in his Miles biography), and Stockhausen (whose<br />
own ‘western art-music’ was profoundly influenced by the music and<br />
philosophy of non-western cultures; w<strong>it</strong>ness ‘Stimmung’ or ‘Ceylon/Bird<br />
of Passage’). Such experimentation suggests some kind of synthesis<br />
between the oppos<strong>it</strong>ions sketched above – or, rather, a world where<br />
oppos<strong>it</strong>ions between different musical cultures are not erased, but<br />
remain in some sense sublimated, cultural elements mixing together<br />
while the remaining traces of oppos<strong>it</strong>ion between them generate a<br />
creative tension that contributes enormously to the music’s dark and<br />
disturbing qual<strong>it</strong>y.<br />
But Williams does not really raise the issue at all; all we get are the<br />
usual anecdotes about Davis being impressed by a performance of<br />
African dance and the assertions that Bill Evan’s playing demonstrated<br />
the influence of Ravel, Debussy, et al. At times, this sort of thing feels<br />
like a kind of avoidance; as if Williams holds himself back when he<br />
thinks he might be digging too deep. Thus, one could even see ‘Kind of<br />
Blue’ as leading to free jazz or improv, given <strong>it</strong>s expansion of tonal<strong>it</strong>y,<br />
form and time (most explic<strong>it</strong>ly in the Evans/Chambers introduction to<br />
‘So What’), and <strong>it</strong>s move as a whole away from be-bop constrictions and<br />
emphasis on technical virtuos<strong>it</strong>y, to laying stress on an overall sound, a<br />
collective construction. Yet, if anything, Williams contrasts <strong>it</strong> w<strong>it</strong>h free<br />
jazz, making instead the much easier connection to ECM atmospherics<br />
and to minimalism’s return to simple tonal<strong>it</strong>y – though he conveniently<br />
forgets that Davis himself was less interested in endlessly rehashing<br />
melancholy ballads than in adopting an approach which fore-grounded<br />
powerful rhythms, overlain w<strong>it</strong>h dissonant, aggressive, effects-laden<br />
gu<strong>it</strong>ars and keyboards. Indeed, Williams does l<strong>it</strong>tle to counter the usual<br />
cr<strong>it</strong>icism of ECM when he argues that Manfred Eicher did not create “a<br />
bloodless Europeanisation of jazz” because the label’s catalogue<br />
contained work by Don Cherry, The Art Ensemble of Chicago, Wadada<br />
Leo Sm<strong>it</strong>h and Charles Lloyd alongside the usual suspects: Garbarek,<br />
Jarrett, et al. Which simply makes <strong>it</strong> sound as if most of the music is<br />
bloodless, but that that’s OK, because there’s a b<strong>it</strong> of free jazz there too –<br />
which doesn’t address the accusation of a generalised bloodlessness,<br />
exceptions granted. (Indeed, Lloyd’s work on ECM often conforms to the<br />
stereotype – ‘Lift Every Voice’, desp<strong>it</strong>e <strong>it</strong>s claims to be a response to 9/11<br />
(or perhaps because of them) remains muted to the point of ennuiinducement.)
The book ends on a description of a vis<strong>it</strong> to La Monte Young’s<br />
Dream House, which is fine in <strong>it</strong>self (reading like a well-wr<strong>it</strong>ten<br />
newspaper report), but which has nothing to do w<strong>it</strong>h Davis or ‘Kind of<br />
Blue’; and Williams does not even attempt to make the connection. It’s<br />
typical of the way the book comes increasingly to feel like several<br />
Guardian articles st<strong>it</strong>ched together, w<strong>it</strong>h maybe a few sentences on Davis<br />
or ‘Kind of Blue’ to keep the thread going: they’re decent articles in<br />
themselves, but the real work – the task of drawing together thematic<br />
areas and expanding beyond the usual chronological histories of what<br />
are, after all, pretty well-discussed topics – is left undone. Consequently,<br />
‘The Blue Moment’ is not as incisive as <strong>it</strong> could have been. (DG)<br />
STUART BAKER/ GILLES PETERSON – FREEDOM, RHYTHM &<br />
SOUND: REVOLUTIONARY JAZZ COVER ART 1965-83
Publisher: SJR (Soul Jazz Records) Publishing<br />
Publication Date: 2009<br />
Number of Pages: 179<br />
While coffee-table jazz books are common, coffee-table free jazz<br />
books are understandably less so; come to think of <strong>it</strong>, ‘Freedom, Rhythm<br />
and Sound,’ published by Soul Jazz Records (who have a good eye for<br />
design themselves), is probably the first of <strong>it</strong>s kind. In terms of layout<br />
and appearance, the book is impeccable: a large hard-back, w<strong>it</strong>h a<br />
striking cover of stark black letters on a bright yellow background; glossy<br />
pages; unobtrusive text nestling next to and underneath carefullyarranged<br />
pictures; and image upon image, page after page – a wide and<br />
eclectic selection of the cover art to better and lesser-known albums. For<br />
those whose shelves are crammed w<strong>it</strong>h original LPs, or those who have<br />
become almost unconsciously familiar w<strong>it</strong>h these sorts of designs<br />
through trawling out-of-print music blogs, many of the images will be<br />
recognizable. But seeing them all together in one place, as one can w<strong>it</strong>h<br />
this book, crystallizes a sense of continu<strong>it</strong>y and thematic un<strong>it</strong>y which<br />
can only enhance one’s appreciation for these record covers as works of<br />
art in their own right, not simply pretty or arresting wrapping for the<br />
aural treasures w<strong>it</strong>hin the record sleeve.<br />
That said, such a glossy work does reflect the way in which any<br />
image can become assimilated into a process of production and<br />
consumption – which embraces free jazz and <strong>it</strong>s radical socio-pol<strong>it</strong>ical/<br />
religious roots as simply a lifestyle choice, radical chic to hang up on the<br />
wall. Aware of this, Stuart Baker’s text provides context through a brief<br />
introduction outlining the history of free jazz, and potted biographies of<br />
various key figures, scattered throughout the book. Unfortunately, this<br />
tends to be information which could be gleaned from a quick internet<br />
search and which is basic at best, touching on ideological and pol<strong>it</strong>ical<br />
issues rather fleetingly (a one-sentence quotation from the Black<br />
Panthers, mention of Amiri Baraka and John Coltrane) and preferring to<br />
concentrate on the safer factual approach – ‘in 1971, so-and-so moved to<br />
Paris’ – which is the jazz cr<strong>it</strong>ic’s preferred domain. The text therefore<br />
comes across as a rather cursory run-through of all the relevant sources<br />
and pieces of information; <strong>it</strong> reads like something put together<br />
competently, but not very enthusiastically, for an exhib<strong>it</strong>ion catalogue.<br />
Furthermore, considering the fact that this is a book about the<br />
cover art of these records, <strong>it</strong> might have been nice to have some wr<strong>it</strong>ing<br />
about the art <strong>it</strong>self. While Baker’s introduction does hint at the DIY ethos<br />
that was so v<strong>it</strong>al to much of this music in the third paragraph to his<br />
introduction, he doesn’t return to the theme. Furthermore, what he does<br />
say in this section contains a number of assumptions which could have
done w<strong>it</strong>h being addressed. Take this sentence: “For reasons of economy,<br />
the artwork is often strikingly raw – many were starkly black and wh<strong>it</strong>e,<br />
w<strong>it</strong>h hand-drawn graphics and simple typesetting – a million miles away<br />
from the slick presentation of jazz by the mainstream music industry.”.<br />
What of the artwork that isn’t ‘raw’? What of the careful design of<br />
Mtume’s ‘Alkebu-Lan’: black-and-wh<strong>it</strong>e and hand-drawn, but by no<br />
means crude? What of the use of photography? For instance, we often<br />
see shots of artists, alone or in groups, in urban and natural wastelands,<br />
striking a keen balance between careful, posed compos<strong>it</strong>ion (Joe<br />
McPhee’s ‘Nation Time’) and off-the-cuff, spontaneous document (on<br />
Noah Howard’s Judson Hall recording, some of the artists are looking<br />
towards the camera, while others continue their conversation in the<br />
background, apparently oblivious to the photographer’s presence). There<br />
might be something to consider in the contrast between posed, studio<br />
shots and quick location set-ups – although this was a contrast already<br />
blurred by classic jazz photography, where the illusion of a smoky<br />
glamour, originating as a record of what jazz clubs looked like, was<br />
steadily manipulated into a commercial and conventional image:<br />
saxophonists shown playing their instruments w<strong>it</strong>h cigarettes between<br />
their fingers, or, later, blowing hard w<strong>it</strong>h their eyes closed in passion<br />
(Braxton’s ‘sweating brow’ syndrome, perhaps). Given this, the sharp<br />
distinction Baker draws between ‘raw, DIY, handmade’ free jazz art and<br />
“the slick presentation of jazz by the mainstream music industry” feels<br />
too simple (even if he does attempt to cover himself w<strong>it</strong>h the qualifying<br />
words “often” and “many”). The analogy between free and spontaneous<br />
music and free and spontaneous art elides the fact that the music didn’t<br />
just happen, ‘just like that’: <strong>it</strong> was the process of long searches, long<br />
periods of study, long processes of thought, and the product of particular<br />
historical developments and struggles which should not be reduced to<br />
simplified clichés. There has been debate in free improv circles recently<br />
about the role played by the physical object, by the aesthetic appeal of<br />
having a record which one can hold in one’s hand and look at, as well as<br />
listen to. One might argue that to have something which looks appealing<br />
in this way is not ideologically suspect, is not collusion w<strong>it</strong>h<br />
commercialism or w<strong>it</strong>h the mainstream music industry. In fact, <strong>it</strong>’s qu<strong>it</strong>e<br />
the oppos<strong>it</strong>e: placed against a world of endlessly-exchangeable<br />
commod<strong>it</strong>ies, here is evidence that something is worthy of the time and<br />
effort required to produce a beautiful, individual object, something that<br />
has been crafted and shaped w<strong>it</strong>h close attention to <strong>it</strong>s material and<br />
ideological qual<strong>it</strong>ies.<br />
If we accept that such objects are worthy of respect and study – as<br />
the publishers of this anthology must do, to have produced a book<br />
devoted to these album covers – we must also accept that their creators<br />
should also be accorded w<strong>it</strong>h more than a name-check. Sure, we see
names in the cred<strong>it</strong>s below the images– painters, photographers,<br />
designers – but they remain simply names. Each of these people had<br />
their own story, their own involvement, their own ideology, their own<br />
contribution. For a book that honours their work, would <strong>it</strong> not have<br />
made sense to honour those that made <strong>it</strong>?<br />
It’s hard, then, not to feel that an opportun<strong>it</strong>y or several have been<br />
missed here. Visual art is, after all, an element of the free jazz movement<br />
which never receives much attention, yet <strong>it</strong> is undoubtedly a part of the<br />
aesthetic appeal of the music. Like <strong>it</strong> or not, a record sleeve is identified<br />
in the listener’s mind w<strong>it</strong>h the music <strong>it</strong> contains – and this arguably still<br />
the case, even in the age of multiple downloads nestling on a hard drive<br />
as cover-less MP3s. (Hence devoting an entire book to album covers.)<br />
Baker, Gilles Peterson (his fellow compiler) and the publishers<br />
have clearly put a lot of work into gathering together information for the<br />
book, and a lot of work in putting <strong>it</strong> together in an aesthetically pleasing<br />
way; furthermore, as the list of acknowledgements shows, they have<br />
sought out permission from a number of artists and labels to use the<br />
images included. It would surely not have been hard for them also to<br />
have commissioned an essay by an art historian or some other wr<strong>it</strong>er<br />
w<strong>it</strong>h some knowledge of the time period – or to have contacted some of<br />
the cover artists themselves, interviewing them, gleaning some<br />
information about the processes which went into creating the covers.<br />
This wr<strong>it</strong>er, or these wr<strong>it</strong>ers, could have analyzed differences and<br />
similar<strong>it</strong>ies between designs, could have analyzed the role of the<br />
musicians themselves in putting things together (many artists have a<br />
design cred<strong>it</strong> to their name). For instance, we are not told that the covers<br />
of the various Don Cherry records are tapestries by his wife Moki, their<br />
use of tapestry w<strong>it</strong>h motifs from non-western cultures, simplified forms,<br />
and unusual colour schemes all making a conscious break from the<br />
black-and-wh<strong>it</strong>e, smoky aesthetic of Blue Note or Birdland.<br />
And then we might ask: what about the role of ‘wacky’ psychedelic<br />
images – inverted colours, distorted photographs, Bridget Riley-esque<br />
swirls and abstract patterns? How does that f<strong>it</strong> into the current of the<br />
times? Is <strong>it</strong> merely superficial decoration, or does <strong>it</strong> have something more<br />
to offer? What about the use of group photographs as a statement of<br />
collective ident<strong>it</strong>y (as opposed to the fetishisation of one particular<br />
musician as the ‘star’ of the band, whose image alone adorns the<br />
records)? What about comparisons w<strong>it</strong>h more mainstream jazz covers? –<br />
for instance, Miles Davis’ placing of black faces (his and Cicely Tyson’s)<br />
on ‘Sorcerer’ and ‘Nefert<strong>it</strong>i,’ having objected so strongly to the photo of a<br />
yacht-bound wh<strong>it</strong>e woman slapped onto the front of ‘Miles Ahead’, and<br />
moving away from the cover of ‘Porgy and Bess’, where a female hand
stroking a trumpet reinforces the black sexual stereotypes associated<br />
w<strong>it</strong>h jazz. Or the gorgeous super-imposed face effect on ‘Filles de<br />
Kilimanjaro’; the psychedelic colour-shape of ‘Miles in the Sky’; and the<br />
Mati Klarwein cover art to ‘B<strong>it</strong>ches’ Brew’ and ‘Live-Evil’, Klarwein’s use<br />
of African figures and transforming, liquid landscapes reflected in the<br />
painting on the front of Sun Ra’s ‘The Nubians of Plutonia’ (the Impulse<br />
re-issue). The 60s and 70s may have been a time when a sense of the<br />
‘spir<strong>it</strong>ual’ often spilled over into incoherent babble and superficial<br />
bullsh<strong>it</strong> – everyone was peppering their work w<strong>it</strong>h symbols and allusions<br />
– but there are clear ideological messages at work in the free jazz designs<br />
which mark them out as more purposeful than mere hippie<br />
paraphernalia (though there may be an element of that as well).<br />
Explanations of the significance behind the symbols and objects that<br />
appear again and again – idols, pyramids, third eyes – would at least<br />
indicate that they were being taken seriously, rather than as mere fancy<br />
decoration.<br />
The lack of any such analysis perhaps stems from the fact that<br />
‘Freedom Rhythm and Sound’ has been put together in the manner of a<br />
CD compilation, gathering together rare material from various dusty<br />
corners in true record-collector fashion (Gilles Peterson is, after all, a<br />
true record-collector). Unfortunately, where the music on a compilation<br />
can be allowed to speak for <strong>it</strong>self – or has been spoken about in<br />
numerous books and articles which can be separately tracked down –<br />
the same cannot be said of this cover art. ‘Freedom Rhythm and Sound’<br />
is, to my knowledge, the first book to pay attention to the visual aspects<br />
of free jazz records, and, while <strong>it</strong>s regrettable that <strong>it</strong> didn’t delve as far<br />
into things as <strong>it</strong> could have, <strong>it</strong>s images do provide ample proof that this<br />
is very fertile terr<strong>it</strong>ory for future explorers. (DG)<br />
MATTIN & ANTHONY ILES (ed.) – NOISE & CAPITALISM<br />
Publisher: Arteleku Audiolab (Kr<strong>it</strong>ika series), Donostia-San Sebastián (Gipuzkoa)<br />
Publishing Date: September 2009<br />
Number of Pages: 191<br />
Contents: Anthony Iles – Introduction; Mattin – Going Fragile; Csaba Toth – Noise<br />
Theory; Edwin Prévost – Free Improvisation In Music and Cap<strong>it</strong>alism: Resisting<br />
Author<strong>it</strong>y and the Cults of Scientism and Celebr<strong>it</strong>y; Ray Brassier – Genre is Obsolete;<br />
Bruce Russell – Towards a Social Ontology of Improvised Sound Work; Nina Power –<br />
Woman Machines: The Future of Female Noise; Ben Watson – Noise as Permanent<br />
Revolution or, Why Culture Is a Sow Which Devours <strong>it</strong>s Own Farrow; Matthew Ryland –<br />
Company Work vs. Patrician Radiers; Matthieu Saladin – Points of Resistance &<br />
Cr<strong>it</strong>icism in Free Improvisation: Remarks on a Musical Practice and Some Economic<br />
Transformations; Howard Slater – Prisoners of the Earth Come Out! Notes towards ‘War<br />
at the Membrane’; Mattin – Anti-Copyright: Why Improvisation & Noise Runs Against<br />
the Idea of Intellectual Property<br />
Further Information: As well as the published ed<strong>it</strong>ion, which can be obtained from<br />
Mattin’s webs<strong>it</strong>e (http://mattin.org) in exchange for live tapes, etc, the book can be<br />
downloaded as a free PDF from http://www.arteleku.net/audiolab/noise_cap<strong>it</strong>alism.pdf
This is fantastic stuff. Of course, there is a smallish swarm of<br />
intellectual activ<strong>it</strong>y surrounding the sort of issues discovered here, but<br />
more often than not <strong>it</strong> centres on jazz and American practices.<br />
Consequently, discussions tend to get sidelined into the race issue – an<br />
issue which is crucial for the development of that music, but which can<br />
impose a narrowing of focus when one considers that much noise and<br />
free improvisation is created by non-African Americans who are not living<br />
in the particular historical context of a racially-oppressive society<br />
(though of course one w<strong>it</strong>h <strong>it</strong>s own deep networks of imperialism,<br />
alienation, &c.). Serious intellectual examination of music, as practiced
y some of the journalists from Wire magazine, may also find <strong>it</strong>self<br />
restricted by the necess<strong>it</strong>y of providing a review of a product (whether a<br />
live performance or an album) which evaluates that product on aesthetic<br />
grounds first and foremost – and whose audience may resist the<br />
presence of cr<strong>it</strong>ical theory: too much pol<strong>it</strong>ics for them to swallow, an<br />
‘irrelevance’, intruding on their desire for a generalised ‘underground’<br />
freedom to enjoy their niche of generalised musical resistance to the<br />
‘mainstream’ (represented by such easy-target bogeymen as George Bush<br />
and…um, Br<strong>it</strong>ney Spears).<br />
Not that these are the only intellectual examinations available: fine<br />
wr<strong>it</strong>ing has emerged in recent years from David Borgo, whose book ‘Sync<br />
or Swarm’ approaches free improvisation from a primarily scientific<br />
perspective (applying fractal and swarm theory to the mental processes<br />
involved in making music in this manner), and in the e-pages of the<br />
online journal Cr<strong>it</strong>ical Studies in Improvisation, whose numerous wr<strong>it</strong>ers<br />
approach their topics from any number of different disciplines or models<br />
– feminism, queer theory, race, &c.<br />
But this book is different from all that. (NB: refer to footnote before<br />
reading further.) 1 Yes, this book is different (in a really useful way),<br />
because <strong>it</strong>s aim is to make pol<strong>it</strong>ics just as much as <strong>it</strong>s subject as music,<br />
and to see the two as fundamentally linked (hence the equal weighting –<br />
noise and cap<strong>it</strong>alism).<br />
As well being a fine performer, one of the few who really takes the<br />
notion of praxis seriously and attempts to apply <strong>it</strong> in everything he does,<br />
Mattin is a fine wr<strong>it</strong>er of manifestos, or manifesto-like pieces, one of<br />
which, ‘Going Fragile,’ follows the Introduction (and was previously – and<br />
is currently – available on his webs<strong>it</strong>e). <strong>Here</strong>, he advocates an approach<br />
of risk-taking in free improvisation, resisting the trade-marking of one<br />
area of sonic activ<strong>it</strong>y or mode of approach and being open to those<br />
moments when failure seems most likely, when crisis prompts the<br />
human to be most resourceful. This idea of risk is a crucial one in the<br />
book as a whole – perhaps unsurprising given Mattin’s involvement. For<br />
instance, the cover consists of a transcript of a conversation between the<br />
three designers (one of whom is Mattin himself) as to how the binding<br />
might reflect ideological biases relating to the words w<strong>it</strong>hin. Such a<br />
concern w<strong>it</strong>h the tiniest material details of production and their relation<br />
to socio-pol<strong>it</strong>ical issues might seem, to some, like overkill, but <strong>it</strong> is surely<br />
evidence of a very deep comm<strong>it</strong>ment and a rigorous refusal of easy<br />
real<strong>it</strong>ies and comforts, in the pursu<strong>it</strong> of a deeper and more complete<br />
sense of what <strong>it</strong> means to be human and to live in the modern world.<br />
1 Yes, the old reviewer’s tactic: lay out the product’s uniqueness and everyone will rush to get hold of <strong>it</strong><br />
to satisfy some new thrill, just another object in the production line manufacturing desires and wants.
The collection’s different authors have – healthily – different views<br />
on issues musical and pol<strong>it</strong>ical, even though they might be put broadly<br />
into the camp of leftist advocates of musical experimentation as a form of<br />
praxis: frequent reference points are Guy Debord and, perhaps more<br />
surprisingly, Karl Marx (whose popular<strong>it</strong>y has slipped w<strong>it</strong>h the growing<br />
trend of pol<strong>it</strong>ically-minded music cr<strong>it</strong>ics to draw on post-modernist<br />
theory (w<strong>it</strong>ness the big hoo-hah over the music of Tricky, Burial, etc<br />
being a form of ‘hauntology’)). 2<br />
Eddie Prévost’s essay treads lines familiar to those who have read<br />
his two full-length books, ‘No Sound Is Innocent’ and ‘Minute<br />
Particulars’, but remains a deft and succinct history lesson/ negotiation<br />
of pos<strong>it</strong>ions. Prévost pos<strong>it</strong>s free improvisation as a practice which<br />
contains the possibil<strong>it</strong>y for a genuine social interaction (through music)<br />
which might evade the otherwise ever-present clutches of cap<strong>it</strong>alist<br />
relations; an alternative system, something w<strong>it</strong>h the inkling of an<br />
alternative social real<strong>it</strong>y (on which, see also George Lewis’ ‘A Power<br />
Stronger Than Itself’, Mike Heffley’s ‘A Composed Theory of Free<br />
Improvisation’, and Anthony Braxton’s ongoing large-group projects in<br />
the field of Ghost Trance Music and Diamond Curtain Wall Music).<br />
Prévost is not arguing that free improvisation is some sort of utopian<br />
realm in which that alternative social real<strong>it</strong>y can actually exist as a<br />
total<strong>it</strong>y, for, as he adm<strong>it</strong>s: “[Free improvisation’s] pract<strong>it</strong>ioners are not<br />
immune from the basic requirements of existence (w<strong>it</strong>hin cap<strong>it</strong>alism)<br />
which enables them to continue living. Certain material cond<strong>it</strong>ions have<br />
to be met before any music can be made.” (p.41) Nonetheless, free<br />
improvisation remains a form (or, perhaps more accurately, process) in<br />
which unmediated, direct dialogue can take place, and in which<br />
specialisation and el<strong>it</strong>ism can be reduced: for, while many free players<br />
are intensely dedicated musicians w<strong>it</strong>h rigorous practice regimes, free<br />
improvisation is nonetheless an activ<strong>it</strong>y open to anyone. This may break<br />
down the trad<strong>it</strong>ional barriers between a passive, non-specialist audience<br />
and a separated, elevated performer (think the People Band handing out<br />
percussion instruments at gigs, or even Roland Kirk’s distribution of<br />
whistles to the audience at Ronnie Scott’s).<br />
Free improvisation, in Prévost’s argument, is also made to steer a<br />
course between the other major avant-garde alternatives in twentiethcentury<br />
(classical) music. The first of these is the rigorously scientific<br />
approach of the Darmstadt School, wherein results fairly similar to those<br />
which could be achieved in free improvisation were solely the province of<br />
the composer, conceived as a specialist w<strong>it</strong>h utterly rigorous and timeconsuming<br />
methods. But, as Prévost points out w<strong>it</strong>h regard to<br />
2 http://www.artandpopularculture.com/Hauntology
Stockhausen’s ‘Mikrophonie I’ (a detailed exploration of the myriad<br />
complex and unusual sonor<strong>it</strong>ies to be coaxed out of a tam-tam), such<br />
arguments frequently went against what actually happened in the<br />
realisation of these compos<strong>it</strong>ions as sound, as music, rather than as<br />
theoretical exercises on paper (scores): “Reading Karlheinz Stockhausen<br />
talking about the development of this ‘compos<strong>it</strong>ion’ <strong>it</strong> becomes very clear<br />
that his own explorations w<strong>it</strong>h the tam-tam proved to be difficult to<br />
notate or even to repeat w<strong>it</strong>h any hope of accuracy. The question one has<br />
to ask is, why not let the musicians themselves make theses sonic<br />
enquiries?, Why do Stockhausen’s supporters maintain the idea that<br />
unpredictable sounds emerging this way, i.e. by the performers,<br />
const<strong>it</strong>ute his ‘compos<strong>it</strong>ion’? As a long-standing tam-tam player myself, I<br />
know and rejoice in the uncertainties of the instrument. I am always<br />
amazed that different people using the same kind of instrument seem to<br />
manage to produce such a divers<strong>it</strong>y of sounds. All this, to me, seems to<br />
be a signifier and a celebration of human<strong>it</strong>y and not at all scientific, even<br />
though a playful sense of enquiry is at the heart of the exercise. The<br />
interface between materials and the person has a special individual<br />
imprint. Such a free and spontaneous approach, which is the general<br />
modus vivendi of an improviser, is an unmediated and an unfettered<br />
response to the world. It is not, thankfully, subject to some scientific<br />
calculation. It is not repeatable. And there is no good reason why <strong>it</strong><br />
should be repeated: except to capture and exclusively enslave the sounds<br />
– and maybe explo<strong>it</strong> them financially.” (pp.54-5)<br />
Perhaps the veneration of the composer has something to do w<strong>it</strong>h<br />
the cult of celebr<strong>it</strong>y (tying back to the much older trad<strong>it</strong>ion of ‘heroism’ –<br />
and, of course, heroes are predominantly male, just as composers are),<br />
and of marketing opportun<strong>it</strong>y. Thus, the infamous Helicopter Quartet, in<br />
which the musicians’ performances in different helicopters are radioed<br />
back to the concert hall and mixed live by the composer, is an enormous<br />
spectacle, serving to propagate the myth of Stockhausen as a largerthan-life<br />
mystical genius, a composer whose works demand and involve<br />
an excess justified solely due to the part they play in the building up of<br />
this legend; an overpowering by scale and (apparent) audac<strong>it</strong>y w<strong>it</strong>h the<br />
mystifying effect of a religious r<strong>it</strong>ual, but w<strong>it</strong>hout even the content of that<br />
r<strong>it</strong>ual – truly, a Debordian spectacle.<br />
The second approach to come under Prévost’s scrutiny is the<br />
apparently more affable Cageian school, here cr<strong>it</strong>icised for the removal of<br />
social relation and human intention from the process of music-making,<br />
the adoption of ‘chance’ and ‘random’ elements, the attempt to remove<br />
personal<strong>it</strong>y and to simply ‘let the sounds be sounds’. The prime target<br />
here is Cage’s long-term collaborator David Tudor – who was hauled up<br />
on precisely the same grounds by Cecil Taylor in A.B. Spellman’s ‘Four
Lives in the Bebop Business.’ Tudor once remarked: “I had to learn how<br />
to cancel my consciousness of any previous moment in order to produce<br />
the next one, bringing about the freedom to do anything.” The problem<br />
w<strong>it</strong>h this, as Prévost notes, is that “any so-called ‘freedom’ is totally<br />
dislocated from any human objective - except the perverse satisfaction of<br />
carrying out an irrelevant instruction. Perhaps Tudor, in the above<br />
quotation, was explaining some of his own strategies for trying to escape<br />
‘the anticipated’ in performance. But there is something self-deceiving in<br />
the idea of trying: ‘to cancel one’s consciousness of any previous<br />
moment’. This practice is nigh impossible as well as being perhaps of no<br />
particular consequence.” (p.50) The freedom thus achieved is thus a very<br />
different one from that of free improvisation, which always carries w<strong>it</strong>h <strong>it</strong><br />
some notion of responsibil<strong>it</strong>y (to oneself, to the audience, to the other<br />
musicians, to the flow of the music); <strong>it</strong> is a pointless freedom, a freedom<br />
which exists for no real purpose and to no real end, sacrificing both the<br />
self and the social to some idealized concept of nothingness.<br />
This is all well argued, w<strong>it</strong>h a minimum of fuss and academic<br />
name or jargon-dropping, considering pol<strong>it</strong>ical theories and real<strong>it</strong>ies<br />
while remaining closely focussed on how these might and have related to<br />
actual practice, to actual music-making. But <strong>it</strong>s presence in this<br />
anthology leaves a number of unanswered (or perhaps one might even<br />
say un-raised) questions: for instance, we might safely say that Prévost’s<br />
subject is acoustic free improvisation, given the re<strong>it</strong>eration of his dislike<br />
for “abuses occurring in music (e.g. the oppressive use of electronically<br />
induced volume and the indiscriminate, often careless and uninspired<br />
usurpation of material by means of sampling)” (p.57). Of course, ‘Noise’<br />
could f<strong>it</strong> w<strong>it</strong>h Prévost’s ideal concepts of free improvisation if <strong>it</strong> is taken<br />
as a term signifying the opening up of spaces w<strong>it</strong>hin and against the<br />
system of modern-day cap<strong>it</strong>alism. Thus, in the following essay, by Ray<br />
Brassier: “ ‘Noise’ has become the expedient moniker for a motley array<br />
of sonic practices – academic, artistic, counter-cultural – w<strong>it</strong>h l<strong>it</strong>tle in<br />
common besides their perceived recalc<strong>it</strong>rance w<strong>it</strong>h respect to the<br />
conventions governing classical and popular musics. ‘Noise’ not only<br />
designates the no-man’s-land between electro-acoustic investigation, free<br />
improvisation, avant-garde experiment, and sound art; more<br />
interestingly, <strong>it</strong> refers to anomalous zones of interference between genres:<br />
between post-punk and free jazz; between musique concrète and folk;<br />
between stochastic compos<strong>it</strong>ion and art brut.” (p.62)<br />
However, ‘Noise’ has also become – to quote Brassier once more –<br />
“a specific sub-genre of musical vanguardism,” a term which has come to<br />
designate precisely that loud, oppressive, harsh electronically-induced<br />
volume and playful/subversive use of sampling to challenge notions of<br />
genre and the origin of material, of which Prévost so disapproves. W<strong>it</strong>h
egards to this, issues arise such as the relation between loud electronics<br />
and quieter acoustic instruments, and, more broadly, the relation of free<br />
improvisation to noise (or free noise), and the role of theatre and<br />
performance in both (something I’ve come to feel increasingly neglected<br />
in the rather staid performance context of much free improv – of which<br />
more later). Mattin, for example, performs in both very quiet contexts<br />
w<strong>it</strong>h Radu Malfatti and extremely noisy and disrespectful contexts in<br />
which he constantly challenges expectations, in a qu<strong>it</strong>e aggressive way:<br />
for instance, ‘Proletarian of Noise’, which includes a half-hour track<br />
consisting of the reading of a text punctuated by extremely long silences,<br />
and a shorter piece consisting solely of the sounds of typing on a<br />
computer keyboard, and ‘Pink Noise’, where he lays down 30 minutes of<br />
ear-bending feed-back over which Junko simply screams – hardly a<br />
model of social (or socialist) interaction, as Prévost might desire.<br />
I’ll come back to such questions in a short while. But now, we<br />
might move on to look in more detail at some specific essays. Ben<br />
Watson – as usual – combines rabble-rousing quasi-manifesto gestures<br />
and sharp analysis of the lapses made by his various targets (in this<br />
case, Wire magazine, and their uncr<strong>it</strong>ical treatment of the whole ‘Noise<br />
Music’ scene), w<strong>it</strong>h the valorisation of a chosen few (Lendormin,<br />
Ascension, John Coltrane). In this particular piece, he also insists<br />
vociferously on a kind of cult of amateurism and the unlearning of<br />
technique which seems to me to ignore what actually goes on in the<br />
musics he so loves. I quote: “Modern art is an eruption of immediacy…<br />
rubbishing all previous cultural standards, achievements, techniques<br />
and skills: Asger Jorn’s childish scribbles, Derek Bailey’s ‘can’t play’<br />
gu<strong>it</strong>ar, J.H. Prynne’s ‘incomprehensible’ poetry. Extrinsic formal<br />
structure (whether song or compos<strong>it</strong>ion or training) prevents us seeing<br />
what’s right under our noses: instruments, fingers, people, ears,
amplifiers, attention, inattention.” (pp.114-15) These are the things<br />
Watson values, as he’s made clear in his cr<strong>it</strong>ical work throughout his<br />
career – and he’s ent<strong>it</strong>led to such preferences. But, as he implic<strong>it</strong>ly<br />
acknowledges by putting ‘can’t play’ in scare quotes, Bailey’s approach to<br />
the gu<strong>it</strong>ar was very different to what such a tag would suggest (see, for<br />
example, Dominic Lash’s description, available on the Incus webs<strong>it</strong>e, of<br />
Bailey’s notes towards a planned, but never wr<strong>it</strong>ten book on gu<strong>it</strong>ar<br />
technique). 3 Prynne, meanwhile, is ‘incomprehensible’ not because he’s a<br />
surrealist ranter or a prim<strong>it</strong>ivist sound-poet, but because of the sheer<br />
crammed range of intellection, reference, allusion and suggestion that<br />
bursts from virtually every word of his work. What Watson is doing here<br />
is taking accusations commonly leveled against ‘avant-garde’ artists, and<br />
then running w<strong>it</strong>h them as if they were true, and a good thing!<br />
To take another example, his use of Coltrane as an exemplary<br />
figure for a raggedy collection of free jazzers, free improvisers, rock<br />
musicians and figures somewhere in between (such as the Italian group<br />
Lendormin) may in some ways be entirely accurate – but <strong>it</strong> does a<br />
disservice to Coltrane to implic<strong>it</strong>ly construe him as some kind of<br />
prim<strong>it</strong>ive, unlearning technique for new pastures of uncharted freedom.<br />
For me, that’s a dangerously simplistic explanation – the same sort of<br />
thinking you get when rock cr<strong>it</strong>ics name-check ‘Ornette Coleman’s free<br />
jazz playing’ and believe that this somehow ‘explains’ Don Van Vliet’s<br />
vastly different approach to the saxophone. OK then: contra Watson,<br />
Coltrane’s music is not an abdication of technique, but technique taken<br />
to the nth degree, in the service of expression and of noise (if we<br />
understand noise as overburdening of information dens<strong>it</strong>y, as something<br />
we can’t yet understand, rather than just as regression to prim<strong>it</strong>ive<br />
yawling). Indeed, <strong>it</strong>’s far more helpful to construe any movement as<br />
generating <strong>it</strong>s own techniques, <strong>it</strong>s own formal codes and practices. This<br />
is just simply unavoidable – even if these codes do need sharp kicks up<br />
the backside every few years and even if something else may come along<br />
very soon. New codes are prompted into being through creative<br />
experimentation and the process of learning. That’s why a healthy<br />
respect for trad<strong>it</strong>ion by no means precludes an abil<strong>it</strong>y to play w<strong>it</strong>h, or<br />
even apparently to scorn <strong>it</strong> – as, in the eyes of <strong>it</strong>s most rigidly<br />
conservative adherents, did Coltrane’s music. Such apparent scorn is<br />
actually a development of the original spir<strong>it</strong> in which <strong>it</strong> was first created.<br />
It’s precisely this att<strong>it</strong>ude which has kept African-American forms of<br />
music so v<strong>it</strong>al: as Archie Shepp puts <strong>it</strong>, “Negro music and culture are<br />
inherently existential, improvisational. Nothing is sacred.”<br />
3 Dominic Lash, ‘Derek Bailey’s Gu<strong>it</strong>ar Notes: A Glimpse of the Incus Archive’, available at<br />
http://www.incusrecords.force9.co.uk/pdf/Incus-DB-gu<strong>it</strong>ar-notes.pdf
Watson’s qu<strong>it</strong>e right to slam down the notion of rock bands who<br />
play noise “because Avant is in vogue”, but his valorisation of aggression,<br />
of rock and roll energy and gesture, ignores the fact that the oppos<strong>it</strong>e of<br />
such Noise-as-Volume may be just as noisy as ‘Noise’ (volume and<br />
harshness on their own aren’t inherently subversive; such a concept of<br />
noise is very much prone to the marketisation that Watson so despises).<br />
To illustrate this, we need turn no further than to the anecdote which<br />
prefaces the essay under discussion: that of Eugene Chadbourne playing<br />
country music to free improv audiences, who treated <strong>it</strong> as the kind of<br />
noise others would perceive free improv to be. I’m not, of course,<br />
suggesting that everyone should start playing country music to shake up<br />
the staid ‘weird modern music’ hierarchy, but what I am suggesting is<br />
that ‘Noise’ might be, at times, the oppos<strong>it</strong>e of what is normally<br />
considered ‘noisy’ – extremely quiet and apparently ‘un-energetic’ music<br />
may deny the visceral thrill of Noise (the thrill endorsed in Watson’s<br />
emphasis on the physical), may deny that kind of macho aggression. 4<br />
Mattin, I think, realizes the dangers of a too-narrow defin<strong>it</strong>ion of Noise,<br />
through his highly self-cr<strong>it</strong>ical quest to avoid falling into set patterns<br />
(both behavioural and musical): his ‘reductionist’ work w<strong>it</strong>h Radu<br />
Malfatti is, according to this argument, just as ‘noisy’ as his more ‘powerelectronics’<br />
flavoured laptop work or the ‘Pink Noise’ collaboration w<strong>it</strong>h<br />
Japanese singer/screamer Junko.<br />
I used the word ‘macho’ just now, and I’m not intending that to be<br />
merely a throwaway remark. If Noise, and a particular kind of ‘visceral’,<br />
‘energetic’ form of sound-making does have a kind of macho thrust<br />
behind <strong>it</strong>, we might consider an alternative via the essay preceding<br />
Watson’s, wherein Nina Power thoughtfully considers the work of female<br />
noise artist Jessica Rylan. For Power, Rylan’s work challenges noise<br />
stereotypes, her performances engaging in a more elegant (though by no<br />
means twee) consideration of the relation between voice and synthesizer,<br />
human and machine, audience and artist. Indeed, gender is an issue<br />
which might prof<strong>it</strong>ably have been more discussed in this anthology as a<br />
whole: Power’s (very good) essay feels like a token female inclusion, and<br />
is more an exploration of a particular artist’s work than a wide-ranging<br />
survey of gendered noise – which is not in <strong>it</strong>self a problem, but which<br />
does mean that <strong>it</strong> can’t bear the weight that’s been forced on <strong>it</strong>, to fully<br />
fill the ‘woman component’ of the book. (That said, I’m sure Mattin would<br />
have been mindful of this and would have wanted to avoid the usual<br />
male-dominated circles in which so much of this music’s production and<br />
reception seems to be conducted).<br />
4 See also the concluding paragraph of Howard Slater’s essay. “We can fear silence as if <strong>it</strong> were the most<br />
ear-spl<strong>it</strong>ting noise.” (p.163)
So: why are so many of the artists mentioned men, playing at gigs<br />
attended by men? Is there perhaps something – dare I use the word? –<br />
phallocentric about noise, about the whole rock and roll myth of the<br />
singer w<strong>it</strong>h his phallic gu<strong>it</strong>ar or saxophone? They don’t use the term<br />
‘cock rock’ for nothing, and they might as well invent a similar term for<br />
less mainstream manifestations of ‘aggression’ and ‘energy’ in music. Of<br />
course, there are exceptions: the female performers in the heyday of No<br />
Wave (one of the few avant-garde musical movements in which women<br />
played a role equal to, and perhaps even more prominent than that of<br />
men), someone like Suzi Quatro, or Virginia Genta 5 (the saxophonist in<br />
the Jooklo Duo) – but these are very much exceptions (see what a wide<br />
range of different musics I’ve had to traverse to compile even that<br />
miniscule list), and hence do not trouble the general balance of things.<br />
Thus, for instance, <strong>it</strong>’s OK for Alice Coltrane to play ‘harp-like’ arpeggios<br />
on piano or even on an actual harp (because a harp is a rather womanly<br />
instrument and Alice Coltrane’s music displays that ‘feminine touch’),<br />
but <strong>it</strong> probably wouldn’t be OK if she was the one doing calisthentics and<br />
blasting on saxophone for an hour at the front of the stage, rather than<br />
f<strong>it</strong>ting into the background behind her husband.<br />
We might well bear this gender imbalance in mind when we read<br />
Bruce Russell’s optimistic statement that, “Being outside of the so-called<br />
‘music industry’ which purveys alienated entertainment products that<br />
‘joyously express their slave sentiments’, sound work can create, for brief<br />
periods of time ‘constructed s<strong>it</strong>uations’ where ‘un<strong>it</strong>ary ambiences’ of<br />
sound, mise en scène, and selected audiences of in<strong>it</strong>iated enfants perdus<br />
can briefly combine to ‘foreshadow’ ‘a few aspects of a provisional<br />
microsociety.’ ” (p.89) The pract<strong>it</strong>ioners of Noise and Free Improv, for all<br />
their claims to be engaged in a field of activ<strong>it</strong>y which is inherently more<br />
self-cr<strong>it</strong>ical than perhaps any other, seem to have a blind spot about<br />
still-ingrained gender imbalances and hierarchies, just as much Black<br />
Nationalism of the 1960s tarnished <strong>it</strong>s emphasis on racial liberation w<strong>it</strong>h<br />
slurs on ‘faggots’, ‘Jews’ and women who did not fulfill the roles they<br />
were supposed to fulfil.<br />
Even w<strong>it</strong>hout considering gender, Matthew Hyland is able to take a<br />
less optimistic view than Russell, Prévost or Watson; in his words,<br />
“improvisation (as Derek Bailey intends <strong>it</strong>) resists comnodification almost<br />
successfully. ‘Almost’ remains an upper lim<strong>it</strong> as long as cap<strong>it</strong>al goes on<br />
being strengthened by what hasn’t killed <strong>it</strong> yet.” (p.130) Mathieu Saladin<br />
expands on this, pointing out that the very virtues which make free<br />
improvisation, to <strong>it</strong>s more pol<strong>it</strong>ically-motivated advocates like Prévost, a<br />
model form of interaction resistant to that of cap<strong>it</strong>alist society, have been<br />
absorbed into the adapting forms of modern cap<strong>it</strong>alism (what one might<br />
5 http://virginiagenta.altervista.org/
call ‘post-modern cap<strong>it</strong>alism’, I suppose). Thus (in the words of Pierre-<br />
Michel Menger, quoted by Saladin): “the irony is that the arts, which<br />
have cultivated a fierce oppos<strong>it</strong>ion against the domination of the market,<br />
appear as forerunners in the experimentation w<strong>it</strong>h flexibil<strong>it</strong>y, indeed<br />
hyper-flexibil<strong>it</strong>y” (p.145). Or, Eve Chiapello: “Planning and rational<strong>it</strong>y are<br />
not any more, according to the management teachers and consultants,<br />
the only ways to make a success. Conversely, <strong>it</strong> must be ‘run by chaos,’<br />
continuously innovate, be flexible, intu<strong>it</strong>ive, have a strong ‘emotional<br />
quotient.’ Companies are too bureaucratic, too hierarchical, they alienate<br />
the workforce; they have to ‘learn how to dance.’ ” (p.146) This sounds<br />
none too dissimilar to free improvisation, to which one could easily apply<br />
a checklist derived from the description above: chaos, innovation,<br />
flexibil<strong>it</strong>y, intu<strong>it</strong>ion, emotion. In terms of concrete examples (or merely<br />
anecdotal ‘verification’), this passage particularly struck me given that,<br />
when spinning out some paragraphs for a CV, I discovered how easy <strong>it</strong><br />
was to spin aspects of my experience of freely improvising and organising<br />
a free improvising collective into ‘work-place skills’ that would enable me<br />
to slot nicely into a wholly cap<strong>it</strong>alist job, to be a cog in the alienation<br />
machine.<br />
Perhaps, in the end, one has to take this as a caveat rather than as<br />
a stumbling block which invalidates the whole free improv project; or, if<br />
not as a caveat, as the beginnings of an ongoing cr<strong>it</strong>ical discussion and<br />
self-examination which will remain (as free improv <strong>it</strong>self remains) process<br />
rather than product, continued exploration rather than arrival or<br />
conclusion. Anthony Iles puts <strong>it</strong> best in the final sentence of his<br />
Introduction: “Since we cannot accept that noise or improvisation is by<br />
default anticap<strong>it</strong>alist music, then we need to look more closely at those<br />
resistances and tensions this music carries w<strong>it</strong>hin <strong>it</strong>self – where <strong>it</strong><br />
provides potential tools for cap<strong>it</strong>alism and where <strong>it</strong> supplies means for<br />
getting out of <strong>it</strong>.” (p.17) (For his part, Saladin concludes by arguing that,<br />
as process, free improvisation remains ‘noisy’ by <strong>it</strong>s focus on dissensus<br />
rather than consensus – <strong>it</strong> is “a creation which does not seek<br />
reconciliation or the prof<strong>it</strong> of any a priori success” (p.149)).<br />
***<br />
What the more idealistically-tinged essays in this collection tend to<br />
do is, via c<strong>it</strong>ing a whole range of Marxist scholars, to uphold the unique<br />
possibil<strong>it</strong>ies in free improvisation. Yet, while asserting that <strong>it</strong> may not be<br />
a perfectly resistant alternative to cap<strong>it</strong>alism, they do not really delve into<br />
the specifics of sound practice – the production and consumption<br />
contexts of the free improv ‘scene’. For instance, Bruce Russell argues<br />
that, “As a developing practice, and because of <strong>it</strong>s improvisational<br />
method, this sound work is inherently self-cr<strong>it</strong>ical. It is this which<br />
ensures <strong>it</strong>s sharpness as a tool for exposing reification in other forms of
culture.” (p.77) I’d agree that the methods which one has developed and<br />
which one might be expected to espouse – especially if one has become<br />
associated w<strong>it</strong>h them in the minds and words of cr<strong>it</strong>ics and audiences –<br />
may need to be rejected, questioned, cr<strong>it</strong>icised, so that they do not<br />
simply harden into marketable, reified activ<strong>it</strong>ies, separable from the very<br />
human process of their making (though of course the risk of that<br />
happening is always far less great than in other forms of making<br />
music/sound). Yet the list of methods and possibil<strong>it</strong>ies which Russell<br />
comes up w<strong>it</strong>h hardly sounds very different to the sort of thing that<br />
might have been wr<strong>it</strong>ten when the music was in <strong>it</strong>s infancy in the 1960s<br />
– <strong>it</strong>’s generalisable enough to resist further scrutiny: “experimentation<br />
w<strong>it</strong>h alternative performance-experiences, and the radical rejection of the<br />
cult of the composer, the ‘rules’ of music and the hierarchical models of<br />
compos<strong>it</strong>ion, score-reading and conduction.” (p.87)<br />
Yet, in practice, “experimentation w<strong>it</strong>h alternative performanceexperiences”<br />
tends to mean an ‘underground’ network of spaces which,<br />
while they are certainly different to the concert hall, the rock arena, or<br />
the nightclub, have perhaps become environments which are too settled,<br />
too safe, too comfortable: middle-aged men w<strong>it</strong>h beards gathering in the<br />
back-rooms of pubs suffused w<strong>it</strong>h the smell of real ale and the sound of<br />
free improvisation (or, younger, long-haired, angry men gathering in<br />
dingy basement rooms suffused w<strong>it</strong>h the sound of feedback and the sight<br />
of flaring light shows erupting out of the darkness). The overtly theatrical<br />
and playful aspects brought into the music by Steve Beresford, Han<br />
Bennink, Tristan Hontsinger and Misha Mengelberg have always been<br />
rather disapproved of by a number of free improv aficionados, as if these<br />
performers had somehow over-stepped invisible rules, invisible<br />
guidelines which govern how you ‘should do’ free improv. By contrast,<br />
Derek Bailey would simply s<strong>it</strong> down, no-nonsense, and play, just as<br />
Merzbow, Sachiko M and Axel Dorner adopt a certain bodily stillness in<br />
their performances (though, of course, there are exceptions: Thomas<br />
Lehn’s very physical approach to his analogue synthesizer, Cecil Taylor’s<br />
pelvis-oriented movement on the piano stool). Conventional rules are<br />
very easy to fall into – people mill around, then the performers go up on<br />
stage and perform, then everyone claps and has a drink and mills<br />
around again – and challenges to this are particular notable, when they<br />
happen, because of their rar<strong>it</strong>y; thus, Mattin’s in-concert behaviour has<br />
gained him the reputation of an enfant terrible and, frankly, a b<strong>it</strong> of a<br />
nuisance, when, if we are to believe Russell, such behaviour should be<br />
the norm in free improvisation.<br />
And, while “alternative performance-experiences” might be a goal<br />
desirable but rarely strived for in actual<strong>it</strong>y, Russell’s other cr<strong>it</strong>eria seem,<br />
frankly, a l<strong>it</strong>tle old-hat: the usual sweeping dismissals of the entire
system of compos<strong>it</strong>ion and the score is a hoary old chestnut if ever there<br />
was one. On these grounds, I suppose Russell would dismiss as ‘not free<br />
enough’, or as ‘not posing a challenge to reified practice’, most of the<br />
music of Anthony Braxton and Cecil Taylor (whose music is, as many of<br />
his collaborators have stressed, and as is obvious if you’ve listened to<br />
enough recordings, based very much around compos<strong>it</strong>ional material). In<br />
any case, I won’t go into the issue in detail here; suffice to say that I<br />
agree w<strong>it</strong>h Dominic Lash’s assertion that “free improvisation and the<br />
wr<strong>it</strong>ing down of notes on paper are not mutually exclusive activ<strong>it</strong>ies.” 6<br />
Russell might usefully have paid more attention to the final essay<br />
in the collection, Mattin’s piece on the way that Noise and Improvisation<br />
could/ should resist the notion of Intellectual Property. Developing<br />
Cardew’s famous assertion of the inadequacy of recordings in ‘Towards<br />
an Ethics of Free Improvisation’, Mattin delves into the way in which<br />
such ideological statements so frequently contradict the way in which<br />
free improvisation is actually distributed: Incus, Emanem, and Matchless<br />
all being established record labels devoted to selling recordings of in-themoment,<br />
one-off performances, as reproducible and repeatable artefacts.<br />
For all the claims to abandonment of ‘go-getter’ individualism and the<br />
cult of the ‘inspired’ genius, free improvisers nonetheless continually<br />
reinforce certain notions of authorship, of a hierarchy of performer and<br />
audience, in which certain people create and certain people consume<br />
(though, to be fair, the proportion of actual free improvisers among the<br />
listening cachet for free improv records must be fairly high). Of course,<br />
this is by no means conscious: hence Eddie Prévost’s astonishment that<br />
anyone could want to make a ‘career’ out of free improv (p.146). In<br />
add<strong>it</strong>ion, <strong>it</strong> often arises out of a material necess<strong>it</strong>y: the struggle to<br />
actually earn enough money to make even a rather poorly-paid living<br />
from being a free-improvising musician. When <strong>it</strong> comes to the choice<br />
between actively resisting existing notions of authorship and putting<br />
bread on the table, there are few who would take the option of starvation.<br />
In relation to this, we might consider the concluding point of<br />
Matthew Hyland’s essay: that the dedicated part-timer may have more<br />
time and comm<strong>it</strong>ment to spend on thinking deeply about their music<br />
than the professional in the pay of record companies or reliant on state<br />
funding. This is a more nuanced add<strong>it</strong>ion to Ben Watson’s championing<br />
of the amateur – the professionalisation and individualisation and<br />
specialisation resulting from the pragmatics of ‘making a living’ may be<br />
inherently un-noisy, however much the ensuing product is ‘difficult’ art<br />
which pushes up the decibels.<br />
6 Lash, ibid.
I’m not – necessarily – arguing that all free improvisers and noisemakers<br />
should be amateurs, spending their days washing dishes or<br />
driving taxis (as Cecil Taylor and McCoy Tyner did), and their nights<br />
creating sound. In <strong>it</strong>self that relegates improvisation to a subordinate<br />
role, a secret and illic<strong>it</strong> activ<strong>it</strong>y which one does ‘after-hours’, part of one’s<br />
‘leisure-time’, a ‘hobby’ rather than a main activ<strong>it</strong>y. It also runs the risk<br />
of valorising poverty, thus neatly dovetailing w<strong>it</strong>h the notion of the<br />
starving, misunderstood artist (Chatterton dead in his garret, Van Gogh<br />
crazed and earless, Sonny Simmons and Charles Gayle living on the<br />
streets). According to that viewpoint, the more crummy the job, the<br />
better – you are suffering for what you believe in, you are a martyr at the<br />
hands of an unjust system, you can view yourself and be viewed as a<br />
hero.<br />
These are dangers. But that does not mean we should ignore the<br />
way in which the much-c<strong>it</strong>ed ‘DIY ethos’ characterising free improv and<br />
noise scenes has become an easy accolade, a back-slapping means of<br />
ignoring the way in which performing practices can slip into established<br />
patterns, or even into cliques and hierarchies. Desp<strong>it</strong>e this, DIY does still<br />
remain important, and Mattin is right to point out the way in which <strong>it</strong><br />
could, if pursued to a sufficiently rigorous and self-cr<strong>it</strong>ical extent,<br />
challenge notions of authorship and intellectual property/control. 7 This<br />
is part of a wider discourse – the work of Michel Foucault, and,<br />
especially, Roland Barthes, tends to be applied more to l<strong>it</strong>erature than to<br />
music, but is particularly illuminating in this context due to the way <strong>it</strong><br />
challenges what can easily seem the accepted and ‘natural’ way of things<br />
(‘I create my music as an individual, <strong>it</strong> is my intellectual property, and I<br />
have a right to this ownership’), the way <strong>it</strong> reveals how the actual<br />
production and distribution of ideas is always a social phenomenon.<br />
“Once wr<strong>it</strong>ten, the author stops having control over the text. The text has<br />
<strong>it</strong>s own discourse and power and we should not lim<strong>it</strong> <strong>it</strong> to an<br />
author<strong>it</strong>arian voice. Language <strong>it</strong>self has is own potential and to make <strong>it</strong><br />
solely the property of the author might dilute <strong>it</strong>s power.” (p.179) 8 That’s<br />
not to say that musicians are not responsible for what they play, and for<br />
‘putting <strong>it</strong> out’ (whether in the form of public performances or records),<br />
but is to say that the freedom involved in creating the music could and<br />
should extended to the way that music is received.<br />
7 “People have been self-organising themselves by organising concerts wherever possible and more. This<br />
self-organisation, which constantly makes people change roles; from player to organiser, from cr<strong>it</strong>ic, to<br />
distributor, helps people understand each others roles… Both in the improvised and noise<br />
scene the question of authorship is completely interrelated to that of the producer.” (p.173)<br />
8 Consider alongside this: “What unfolds and becomes visible in the works, the source of their author<strong>it</strong>y, is<br />
none other than the truth manifested objectively in them, the truth that consumes the subjective intention<br />
and leaves <strong>it</strong> behind as irrelevant.” (Theodor Adorno (trans. Shierry Weber Nicholsen), ‘Parataxis: on<br />
Holderlin’s late Poetry’, in Notes to L<strong>it</strong>erature, Vol. 2 (New York; Columbia Univ. Press, 1992), p.110)
Idealism? Perhaps there is a touch, but at least Mattin can<br />
succeed in getting people to think about the fundamental, basic contexts<br />
of what they do, rather than simply re-<strong>it</strong>erating the statements of the<br />
'60s. It’s not enough simply to state that free improv and Noise are<br />
resistant to cap<strong>it</strong>alism, and then to treat this as a given, w<strong>it</strong>hout<br />
questioning this relation, w<strong>it</strong>hout using one’s assertions as a basis to<br />
develop and change one’s own practices. Thus, if Eddie Prévost argues<br />
that “certain material cond<strong>it</strong>ions have to be met before any music can be<br />
made,” Mattin takes things further: “the radical and exploratory<br />
character of improvisation should be directed not only to the making of<br />
music but in changing the cond<strong>it</strong>ions in which the music is produced.”<br />
(p.191) And perhaps – dare we hope? – changing cond<strong>it</strong>ions on this<br />
‘micro’ level might provide the cond<strong>it</strong>ions of possibil<strong>it</strong>y for change on a<br />
wider scale. (DG)
GIG REVIEWS<br />
GANNETS + PHIL WASCHMANN/ CHRIS STUBBS<br />
Folly Bridge Inn, Oxford, Tuesday 29 th September 2009
The duo of Phil Wachsmann (violin, w<strong>it</strong>h electronics) and Chris<br />
Stubbs (percussion, also w<strong>it</strong>h electronics) took a while to h<strong>it</strong> <strong>it</strong>s stride<br />
(though stride isn’t really the appropriate metaphor, given the particular<br />
logic of incident which was in play). Wachsmann bowed violin lines in<br />
‘modern classical’ vein, often repeating one note w<strong>it</strong>h bowing variations,<br />
playing rather piquant, attractive melodies, then scraping the bow below<br />
the bridge or dissonantly plucking: a succession of sound techniques in<br />
which flow wasn’t qu<strong>it</strong>e adjusted, as yet. That said, what the set revealed<br />
as <strong>it</strong> went on was that flow was often not the order of the game; incidents<br />
followed one another in blocks rather than lines, though single areas<br />
would frequently be examined at length, especially by Wachsmann.<br />
Things were settling in by the time the first piece reached <strong>it</strong>s latter<br />
stages, and Stubbs’ percussion in particular was really coming into <strong>it</strong>s<br />
own. Rather than a ‘k<strong>it</strong>’, he utilised a ‘junk’ set-up: tubs, household<br />
implements, and a sheet of metal w<strong>it</strong>h stones and coils attached,<br />
connected to a small amp and an electronic device which was hidden<br />
away behind the upside-down box on which the metal had been placed.<br />
His playing was busy, clanging, clattery: a delectable k<strong>it</strong>chen-pan style<br />
approach sure to break things up and keep them moving, though the<br />
amplified metal elic<strong>it</strong>ed more drawn-out variations, arising no doubt from<br />
a delight in the sonor<strong>it</strong>ies which were being lovingly drawn from the<br />
scrape of a knife or the rattle of a stone.<br />
Waschmann took a closing violin solo (something that he had been<br />
building towards for a while, <strong>it</strong> seemed), and after brief applause, <strong>it</strong> was<br />
Stubbs who went solo, to his surprise as much as anyone else’s – <strong>it</strong> just<br />
felt right, and Wachsmann, eyes closed as ever, concentrated hard,<br />
soaking <strong>it</strong> all up and wa<strong>it</strong>ing for the right moment to enter. It came, and<br />
soon, w<strong>it</strong>h the aid of pedals and resultant effects, he was creating the<br />
effect of an entire string section, w<strong>it</strong>hout this sounding gimmicky – in<br />
fact, <strong>it</strong> was texturally qu<strong>it</strong>e delightful, thick and crumbly but w<strong>it</strong>h a<br />
tautness to <strong>it</strong> that seemed as though <strong>it</strong> could break at any point. He even<br />
got into some Henry Flynt/ Tony Conrad-style folk-tinged melodic drone,<br />
in a section lasting minutes which was really qu<strong>it</strong>e pretty, almost<br />
pastoral, until Stubbs’ stormclouds of foghorn electronics pushed him<br />
into engine effects, bowing up and down the string, and thence to<br />
texturally sparser but more actively eventful extrapolations.<br />
Gannets played LOUD from the off, and didn’t stop: the sheer force<br />
of their entry took me by surprise, as Steve Noble’s drums and Fyfe<br />
Dangerfield’s massively amped-up and distorted keyboard vibrated the<br />
floor. It’s impossible really to describe the whole performance (which I<br />
guess must have lasted around forty minutes) step by step: though there<br />
were defin<strong>it</strong>e narrative segments, the overwhelming power and loudness
made <strong>it</strong> hard to remember what had gone before. Paying attention to<br />
particular lines or areas or segments would be like concentrating on the<br />
individual bricks which made up this monstrous wall of sound. I say<br />
‘wall of sound’, but, on reflection, that well-travelled metaphor seems<br />
inappropriate given the relentless propulsion of the thing. This was not a<br />
solid construction that sat still on solid foundations; rather something<br />
had somehow been set in motion that just would not stop. Indeed, <strong>it</strong> was<br />
almost as if the music had moved beyond the conscious control of the<br />
players. I don’t mean that they weren’t in control of what they were<br />
playing, but that what and when they chose to play (mostly, sounds full<br />
of timbral harshness and buoyant, abrasive energy, all the time) were<br />
decisions into which they were pushed by force of circumstance, being<br />
made to think and to act simultaneously, to play something before they’d<br />
caught up w<strong>it</strong>h what was involved. It’s an approach which, of necess<strong>it</strong>y,<br />
skimps on detail, or seems to do so, though the make-up of this sound<br />
mass is clearly very complex (anyone attempting to analyse the minutiae<br />
of what was going on would find enough material to keep them occupied<br />
in a research hole for months).<br />
When things threatened to quieten or turn more melodic, one<br />
player would be sure to squall or bang or pluck away and up the ante<br />
once more, compensating for any drop in volume and tempo. Thus, a<br />
slamming riff section or a burst of ‘fake jazz’ from Dangerfield’s suddenly<br />
tinny keyboard would soon be dropped for more collective lung-busting,<br />
even if Noble did often keep up a fairly pronounced beat, as well as<br />
making his customary journeys round his k<strong>it</strong> w<strong>it</strong>h sticks and w<strong>it</strong>h<br />
various percussive accessories.<br />
Desp<strong>it</strong>e the emphasis played on the band as a band rather than as<br />
a grouping of showy individuals, each musician’s approach had<br />
something distinctively out-standing about <strong>it</strong>. Dominic Lash’s amplified<br />
bass, even w<strong>it</strong>h one broken string, gave a real deep end to the band’s<br />
sound. Alex Ward’s shards of altissimo wail on saxophone and clarinet<br />
were Marshall Allen-like in their scrawly magnificence, and his melodic<br />
leaps, as ever, were endlessly fascinating in their absurdly quickthinking,<br />
mellifluous flow. And Chris Cundy played a mean free jazz bass<br />
clarinet, alternating low honks, growls and parps w<strong>it</strong>h high yawps and<br />
cries, and leaping up the registers even more w<strong>it</strong>h piercing soprano sax –<br />
though his playing on that instrument was often more melodic, if you<br />
were able to pick <strong>it</strong> out of the collective ferment.<br />
At times one wished not so much for ‘subtlety’ (what’s the point in<br />
imposing cr<strong>it</strong>eria on the music which <strong>it</strong> was manifestly not attempting to,<br />
and not going to fulfill?) as for a slight reduction of volume in<br />
Dangerfield’s corner. The utter loudness of his set-up could be seen to
have hindered a more dialogic approach between the other musicians<br />
which would have produced some textural variety: but then again, the<br />
turbo boost of his floor-shaking rumbles and police siren whooshes isn’t<br />
something you come across in every improv band. As a whole, the group<br />
displayed a nicely collective and layered approach to noise-making: w<strong>it</strong>h<br />
no ‘leader’ and no ‘solos’, anyone could shape the music’s direction,<br />
though that seemed to generate <strong>it</strong>self much of the time, as an<br />
unstoppable current against which the musicians had to swim w<strong>it</strong>h ever<br />
more frantically powerful strokes. For a good forty minutes, then,<br />
Gannets transformed the function room of the Folly Bridge Inn into a<br />
profane temple of unholy textured noise. (DG)<br />
SUNN O))) + BJ NILSEN<br />
Trin<strong>it</strong>y, Bristol, Wednesday 9 th December 2009<br />
45 minutes of crunching electronics w<strong>it</strong>h no one on stage; stacks<br />
of amps, keyboards and gu<strong>it</strong>ars an eerie presence, illuminated w<strong>it</strong>h<br />
colour lights but unmanned, occasional puffs from a smoke machine<br />
reinforcing the impression of machines somehow making their own<br />
sounds, unaided, unprompted. Echoes of FX – thunder gunshot voice<br />
elements; field recordings rendered as noise, w<strong>it</strong>h something of a low end<br />
(there were certainly vibrations through the floor) but, compared to the<br />
show which followed, more of an emphasis on extreme high p<strong>it</strong>ches.<br />
Turns out that all this sound was coming from the laptop of support<br />
artist BJ Nilsen, at the back of the room, but w<strong>it</strong>h everyone crowded up<br />
to the front of the stage, craning their necks to see the main draw<br />
appear, <strong>it</strong> seemed instead like an extra-long ‘opening theme’ for the band<br />
to come out to – particularly as various hooded figures would<br />
occasionally wander out armed w<strong>it</strong>h a torch and a bottle of wine, stumble<br />
around, and then potter back off stage. A nice way to play w<strong>it</strong>h the usual<br />
conventions of support/main act relations – everyone was here for Sunn,<br />
so to stick the laptop guy in the shade, as <strong>it</strong> were, stretched the usual<br />
notions of anticipation/ tension/ expectation to breaking point, forming<br />
a comment on stage craft and performance aesthetics as well (a sort of<br />
satirical minimalism, in preparation for the tongue-in-cheek/deadly<br />
serious metal theatrics to follow).<br />
When the mad monks finally did emerge, their down-tuned gu<strong>it</strong>ar<br />
feedback drone meshed w<strong>it</strong>h Nilsen’s electronics for a few minutes,<br />
before eventually overpowering them. Things were a l<strong>it</strong>tle sluggish to<br />
start off w<strong>it</strong>h – as, of course, is the way w<strong>it</strong>h such music, but, though the<br />
volume certainly was there, the heaviness hadn’t qu<strong>it</strong>e set in, the total<br />
immersion in inexorable alternations of sound-masses (chords), in riffs<br />
rendered almost static by their slowness (but, in context, felt as relatively<br />
fast-paced dances, folk stomps, lumbering peasant celebrations).<br />
O’Malley and Anderson concentrated mainly on two chords, not clear
enough to be called riffs, rendered muddy and thick by the add<strong>it</strong>ion of<br />
Steve Moore’s heavily processed Korg keyboards. This went for fifteen<br />
minutes or so before Attila Csihar emerged, carrying what in<strong>it</strong>ially<br />
appeared to be a shadowed idol, but soon turned out to be a see-through<br />
plastic head, which he proffered to each of the other band members in<br />
turn before launching into a whispered/spoken vocal which was, no<br />
doubt, a tale of dark deeds and pagan r<strong>it</strong>ual (the words were pretty much<br />
inaudible in the thicket of sound; Attila’s voice was clear enough, but<br />
more as instrumental colour than anything else). Something was still<br />
missing, however; but, as the gu<strong>it</strong>ars dropped out, some much-needed<br />
space crept into the music, from where things could now build in a more<br />
purposeful fashion. Attila took centre-stage, alternating the swirling<br />
phaser-effects of his throat singing w<strong>it</strong>h death metal screams, an effect<br />
mirrored by the held drone tones and squawking flurries of Moore’s<br />
trombone (the only time he used the instrument through the whole set).<br />
Space builds tension, repet<strong>it</strong>ion and alternation builds r<strong>it</strong>ual power; the<br />
gu<strong>it</strong>ars come back in and <strong>it</strong> gets heavy. Cassocked, Attila cradles the<br />
microphone, shadows his face, so that the sounds seem to emerge from<br />
the depths of his hood rather than from any human mouth. After some<br />
time, he disappears, O’ Malley and Anderson slugging <strong>it</strong> out regardless.<br />
It’s a while before he comes back on stage, having done a costume<br />
change; his robes are now covered in what look like a kid’s attempt to<br />
make a su<strong>it</strong>e of armour, his face draped in a horror-movie mask (what<br />
looks, through the smoke and the coloured lights, like melted wh<strong>it</strong>e<br />
glue). He’s still carrying the plastic head, but now has an add<strong>it</strong>ional<br />
accessory– a statue of liberty style crown, which he first places on the<br />
‘idol,’ before putting <strong>it</strong> on his own head and flashing laser-beams, which<br />
emerge from a pair of gloves, at the audience. I suppose that’s all by the<br />
by, although he does insist on playing around w<strong>it</strong>h the laser beams for<br />
the rest of the set. Sunn’s stage-craft always flirts w<strong>it</strong>h the ridiculous,<br />
but at this point <strong>it</strong> seemed that all caution had been abandoned and a<br />
full-blown relationship was being in<strong>it</strong>iated. In any case, Attila’s vocals<br />
were now an indistinguishable mixture of Satanic reverses, Gregorian<br />
chant, and Eastern-European folksong; hard to get a handle on, but<br />
made easier by a gu<strong>it</strong>ar slugging into a riff, the gu<strong>it</strong>arist lumbering from<br />
side to side in a bizarre shuffle that, though maybe too slow to be called<br />
a dance, certainly approached something of the sort. In perhaps one of<br />
the only genuine headbanging moments of the night (albe<strong>it</strong> in slo-mo),<br />
the riff came in and out of a feedback wall, which occasionally dipped as<br />
the vocal folksong took a sinister turn over Moore’s distorted, bell-like<br />
Fender Rhodes. Things built in this manner to an almighty climax, Attila<br />
obsessively shining his lasers into the crowd before eventually giving up<br />
and slowly collapsing onto the floor as O’Malley and Csihar waved their<br />
gu<strong>it</strong>ars like giant axes in front of the amp-stacks. And then everyone<br />
went off into the night w<strong>it</strong>h their ears ringing & a headache. The end. (DG)
List of Contributors<br />
Sean Bonney, a poet, co-runs the press Yt Communication w<strong>it</strong>h Frances Kruk.<br />
His published work includes ‘Notes on <strong>Here</strong>sey’, ‘Baudelaire in English’, and<br />
‘Blade P<strong>it</strong>ch Control Un<strong>it</strong>.’ More wr<strong>it</strong>ing can be found at his blog:<br />
http://abandonedbuildings.blogspot.com<br />
David Grundy, the ed<strong>it</strong>or of this magazine, is a recent graduate of Cambridge<br />
Univers<strong>it</strong>y. He is involved in free improvisation in Bristol, Cheltenham, Oxford<br />
and Cambridge.<br />
Alexander Kindness is a member of I-C-E (the Improvising Clarinet Ensemble)<br />
and the trio Kindness/ May/ Lash (w<strong>it</strong>h percussionist Paul May and bassist<br />
Dominic Lash).<br />
Daniel Larwood, a Cambridge Univers<strong>it</strong>y Graduate, is a member of The<br />
Cambridge Free Improvisation Society.<br />
Maggie Nicols has been an active free-improvising vocalist, dancer, and<br />
performer since the late 1960s. Her numerous groups and collaborations<br />
include the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, Ke<strong>it</strong>h Tippett’s Centipede, the<br />
Feminist Improvising Group, and the trio Les Diaboliques, w<strong>it</strong>h pianist Irene<br />
Schweizer and bassist Joëlle Léandre.<br />
Ian Thumwood, a keen football fan, birdwatcher and amateur pianist, has an<br />
extensive knowledge of the history and practice of jazz.<br />
Seth Watter has wr<strong>it</strong>ten on music and film for Dusted, WFMU, and Paracinema.